Wayward
by Sailorcelestial
Summary: Finally finished reposting this. With the restlessness of a god, all falls apart to be mended again.
1. Prologue

**Author's Notes, July, 2005:** I wrote Wayward years ago, back in 2000-2001. I've been inspired by something Marika Webster wrote to start re-posting this fic. Those people who know me know that Wayward is my baby, my pride, my joy. I LOVE this story, it's the closest of all my fanfics to my heart. Broken Wing was wonderfully popular (I might re-post that another time) and I appreciate all the attention and reviews I received as a result, but I love Wayward more. I won't promise you, the hapless reader, will love it, but I hope you at least give it a chance.

Wayward IS complete, but I will be posting it a chapter at a time, perhaps one chapter a week.

**Thankies: **Marika Webster, of course, for re-introducing me to Shinigami in such a lovely way. :grin:

**Disclaimers:** I dun own 'em. Not a single freaking one. Don't sue, please.

Wayward

Prologue

Sunlight shone in dusty rivulets through the old lace curtains and leaned its pale legs on the kitchen table. The window sat wide open, allowing sounds of chirping birds and laughing children to wander freely from the outside. The birds called to springtime mates and the children gossiped before having to go to school. And around them rose the shining, green, and happy world of the Earthsphere, finally at peace after so long at war. Humanity wandered unfettered around the planet and space again, without fear of fighting or dying. Life truly was wonderful.

Dorothy Catalonia shoved a spoonful of soggy cereal into her mouth and cursed the end of the war.

At her fingertips on the table lay the morning paper, filled with clothing ads, letters to the editor, and praise for Vice Minister Darlian and her crusade for true and lasting peace. Sure there were the occasional bank robberies or muggings, but none of that came even close to comparing with the majesty and grand sense of power that came with a battle. Why couldn't the rest of humanity understand this?

Disgusted with the lack of conviction in the rest of her species, Dorothy pushed her chair back and stood, tossing her long platinum hair over her shoulder. That was it then, it was decided. She would just have to start a new war herself. Her dark eyes glittered as she thought on all of the glory and power she would gain from being the one to lead humanity back into that magnificent age of wars. They would thank her for giving them back their backbones and their strength. Then they would go out to fight by her orders. It would be wonderful, like the old civil wars: brother fighting against brother and father against son. Sisters and wives going off to defend their husbands, brothers, and boyfriends. Oh the wonder of it all!

But first, she had to go to work.

Dorothy gave a short sigh and retrieved her small fencing foil from its case and her bag with the proper garments and other equipment from her closet. Just another day at Dorothy Catalonia's School of Fencing.

She swung the duffel bag over her shoulder and glanced about. Old newspapers littered the cream-colored carpet of her living room. Three coffee cups from previous mornings had taken up what seemed to be permanent residence on her kitchen table. Both of the rooms she could see from the hallway, which had a trail of dirty clothing leading back to the bedroom. Just in case she couldn't find it one night.

Yup, everything was fine. Time to go.

She strode across the metal border between her carpeted living room and her tiled kitchen to the front door. Her finger barely touched the knob before a knock resounded from the wood. Someone wanted to pay her a visit. But who? No one cared about Dorothy Catalonia anymore.

"Who's there?" she asked, leaning forward to peer out of the peek hole. The distorted image of a person with brown hair and rather large indigo eyes stared back at her over a pair of expensive looking sunglasses. It took her a moment to remember that it was the lens in the peephole that made their eyes so immense. This person was vaguely familiar.

"An old friend," called back a cheerful, wavering voice. Who DID that voice belong to? A name, a memory sat just on the tip of her mind but wouldn't jump. So she unlocked the deadbolt on the door and opened it just the tiniest bit, keeping the chain linking the door to the wall. The person, a boy despite his insanely long braid, flashed her a puckish grin and pulled his sunglasses further down his nose. "Long time, Dorothy."

"Who are you?" She felt extremely cliché and dull, not being able to come up with something more original to ask than that.

"Aw, you don't know me?" He put a hand to his heart and plastered a pained grimace to his face, "I'm wounded, really I am." Dorothy noticed he was dressed quite nicely in a suit consisting of tan colored pants and a jacket, a forest green shirt, and a white tie. A glance downward revealed expensive white shoes to match.

"No, I don't. Am I supposed to? Nevermind, I'd appreciate it if you would leave. I've got to get to work and you're a suspicious character in my way."

"Let me give you a hint . . ." His grin returned, a glint of something she didn't quite like beneath that expression. "It was during the war two years ago, before Mariemaia. You followed Relena Peacecraft around like a sick puppy dog and I was known as Duo Maxwell, pilot of Gundam 02. Although I preferred to call my dear friend Deathscythe. OZ never was very creative."

"A Gundam pilot." Dorothy scowled, resting her weight on one leg and letting her hip jut out in annoyance, "But I never even met you, I just saw your profile once when I joined White Fang. How am I supposed to remember you from that?" Although now she did. The picture formed in her mind, Duo Maxwell's gleeful face and sparkling indigo eyes.

Duo's grin never faltered as he leaned on his right shoulder against the aluminum siding and peered at her almost innocently. "Wishful thinking, I guess." One of his feet propped itself innocuously in contact with the door, keeping her from closing it in his face. "Can I come in?"

Dorothy blinked and stared at him a moment. Who did this guy think he was! He showed up at her house in the morning when she needed to go to work and expected her to let a complete stranger into her house! Crazy! He must have noticed her hesitation, because the next moment his soft hand was through the small crack between the door and the jam, gripping her own pale hand in its grip.

"C'mon, Dorothy. I just wanna reminisce about old times. War, battle, glory. Ya know."

Despite her growing agitation and the pang of fear at the feel of his hand on hers, Dorothy reacted to the magic words.

"Alright then, just a second." She pulled her hand away, watching as his snaked back to its proper place outside her door's boundaries. Closing it, she undid the chain and nearly flung the door open again, feeling strange and suddenly reckless. Why?

"Thanks." He stuffed his hands deep into the pockets on either side of his tan dress pants and stepped inside. Sunglasses still perched precariously at the edge of his nose, Duo peered about her small home. A raised eyebrow told her that he was not at all impressed. And why should he be? If she could gauge by his clothing, Duo Maxwell had become quite wealthy since the end of that spoken of war. He probably lived in a condo somewhere on the Riviera. So Dorothy could almost see the lie as it dripped from his lips in his next breath, "Nice place."

"It works for me."

"I can tell," he smirked, picking up a blue lace bra from the floor. Dorothy lurched forward and snatched it away, praying to God that she wasn't blushing. That would completely ruin her tough girl image. At least it hadn't been the pink lace one.

"That was rude. If you're not careful, I'll kick you out."

"You won't." He turned to her again. His stance was the self-assured one of someone who knew they had the advantage, and his ever-present grin did nothing to betray that image. "You'll like the deal I have to offer you too much."

"Deal?" Dorothy felt her eyes narrow in the automatic gesture of suspicion, "I thought you just came to talk. To 'reminisce about old times' I think you said."

"A tiny white lie. I had to get in, after all." He shrugged, his hands to his sides, fingers splayed in a 'what's-a-guy-supposed-to-do' gesture. That annoyingly sanguine grin never budged or even wavered as he stepped closer to her. Dorothy tried to make her legs carry her backwards as he reached for her, but those useless limbs refused to move. Neither would her mouth open to speak, to order him of her home.

Duo leaned in to her, indigo eyes sparking over the cold plastic barrier of his sunglasses. For one crazy, insane moment Dorothy thought he was going to kiss her. He knew it, and his grin widened as his face veered to place his lips near her ear. Despite herself she felt a tingle of excitement run through her from where his lips brushed her skin. He let them stay that way a moment before actually beginning to speak, but when he did the words he spoke were just as exciting as his touch.

Dorothy pushed him away from her and stared into his eyes, searching them.

"You can do that? Really?"

He shrugged and nodded, nonchalant about the fantastical thing he offered her.

"The price isn't all that much, Dorothy. You'll enjoy making your payments." He extended a hand out to her, tanned from the sunlight of some exotic place she guessed. "Do we have a deal?"

She hesitated. The price he asked, it was rather steep even though he claimed the opposite. And she wasn't sure she could pay it. But to get was he promised in return . . . he had been right. She liked the idea of that reward too much to throw him out or pass it up. Dorothy plunged her hand through the thickened air and grasped his.

"Deal."

Duo tugged on her hand, dragging her into him. His free hand pressed into the skin at the back of her neck, then slowly slid down the expanse of her back. Dorothy sucked in a breath and shivered. Taking the hand he had in his grasp, Duo placed that at his shoulder and his newly freed hand settled at her cheek.

"I forgot to mention the down payment . . . which I think I'll collect now."

She wanted to protest. She wanted to scream. She wanted to slap him and ask him if he was an idiot or if he was just plain conceited.

No she didn't.

She didn't protest when his lips finally did claim hers. She didn't scream when his hands calmly removed her clothing and moved over the most intimate parts of her body. She didn't slap him and she didn't yell at him when he lifted her into his arms and carried her ever so casually into the bedroom at the end of the hallway.

She didn't do any of these things.

She should have.

End Wayward Prologue.


	2. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: **Well, this is the original chapter that made people stop reading the first time I posted this story. Someone even told me it gave them nightmares. And wow, I've written much worse since then, now that I think about it. Still… Wayward remains my baby.

Oh, and to let everyone know, I haven't done any more editing or changed anything since the original posting. It's all exactly the same.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own 'em. No sue. Pwease?

**Wayward **

**Chapter One**

Milliardo sighed as he glanced over the peace treaty in his hands. It was fourteen pages long, and that didn't include the list of demands at the end. He glanced upwards to where the leader of this last, most stubborn colony sat across the table.

"I'll have Vice Foreign Minister Darlian look this over when she's ready." _She'll never be ready for this . . ._

"I'll have you know," the man stated in a nasally accent, "that I find it extremely rude that I traveled all of this way from space to meet with the Vice Foreign Minister, and when I arrive she isn't the one to greet me, nor do I even see a glimpse of her my entire visit!"

"I'm terribly sorry, but she came down with an illness that was no fault of her own, and I and the rest of her staff felt it would be better not only for her health, but yours, if she avoided this meeting." Milliardo held his breath discreetly, hoping that his well-polished answer was enough for this man.

"Well, I suppose if she is_ ill . . ._" he managed to make the comment sound as if he might, one day, be able to forgive the Vice Foreign Minister for her trespass.

"Then I suppose this meeting is over." Milliardo stood, extending his hand to his guest, who shook it quickly and wiped his own hand with a handkerchief after the gesture was made. They proceeded to the door, where an assemblage of high-ranking colonist officials waited to hear the news from their leader. He led them away shrieking indignantly about the horrible rudeness he had encountered both within and without the conference room. Once he was gone, Milliardo heaved a large, heavy sigh and whirled on the nearest maid.

"Where IS she?"

"I-I don't know, Mister Milliardo! I've been knocking on her door for the past hour, but it's locked and she's not answering!" After a brief pause she added only halfway helpfully, "We've looked everywhere else."

Milliardo growled and brushed past her, stomping down the endless numbers of corridors towards the bedroom of his sister, Vice Foreign Minister Relena Darlian. Technically, she was still Princess Relena Peacecraft of the Sanch Kingdom, but for almost two years she had preferred the other title, seeing it as a tribute to the adopted father who she remembered more than her true father. Sometimes Milliardo found this a touching thought, at other times he felt it a great disrespect to their own father. But never had he been angry with his little sister. He'd never had to; she was always the perfect young woman and the perfect leader. He simply couldn't understand why she suddenly would vanish right before a meeting with the very last of the antagonistic colonies.

Before his the white door loomed, and he respected her privacy enough even at this stage of his anger to knock first.

"Relena, what the hell are you doing? I know you didn't forget your meeting today! Relena! Relena, answer me!" Silence. "That's it, I'm breaking the door down!" He turned to get a running start, then had a horrible notion and yelled back at the door again. "And if I find Hiiro Yui in there with you, I'll kill you both!" Probably not the best statement from a child of the Peacecraft family, but oh well. Milliardo backed away, then run forward with all of his speed and rammed into the door, knocking it down but probably dislocating his shoulder at the same time.

The first thing he noticed when he managed to push himself up from the fallen door and fix his attention on something else, was the eerie silence of his little sister's room. It wasn't simply silence, it was ghostly, uncanny. It was the type of silence that heralded something truly wrong. Milliardo felt his breath catch in his throat as he dared to look up.

Relena was on the wall. He stumbled closer, dropping to his knees before the morbid picture. There was a cross drawn on the wall, in some type of red ink, behind her. Another instant and he knew what it was . . . not ink, but blood that stained the floral wall-papered surface. As though in mockery of the crucifixion, his baby sister had been nailed to the make-shift cross. His eyes traveled over her body taking in the grisly sight in mortified silence. His lips moved, but his words could find no voice. Nails had been driven into her wrists. Not small nails . . . no these were larger, like railroad spikes. He knew without looking that her feet would be crossed, with another single nail through her ankles. In a flash he remembered something that his tutor from long ago had told him. The hands would not support the weight of a body, but the wrists, with all the bone, muscles and tendons, would.

Relena's face was bloodied; she'd been beaten. A large bruise decorated her child-like cheek. On the other side there was a palm print, larger than Relena's but smaller than Milliardo's own. Trails of blood had partially obscured her open, glazed eyes. Pooled around her feet was another, larger puddle of dried blood. Milliardo forced his eyes to travel down the length of her body, desperately seeking any sign that his precious sister might be alive. No movement came from her bare chest. Her hair had been pushed behind her shoulders, baring her bloody breasts almost proudly for the world to see. In a twisted way he was grateful for the scrap of cloth that was tied loosely at her waist. It had been torn jaggedly from Relena's own bedsheet, for no one but his little sister still used bright pink sheets with tiny unicorns on them. Milliardo swallowed hard and struggled to his feet once more.

He could not tear his eyes from her too-still form. Instead he let his gaze pass over her as though seeking evidence of who had done such a thing. There was none. Upon closer inspection, he noted the other, less obvious, markings of this crucifixion. What he saw, chilled him. Her slender waist had bloody gashes on it, the kind that would have been made by the biblical cat of nine tails. The legendary whip had nine long tails, as described by its name. Milliardo knew there would be sewn onto the leather small pieces of jagged rock or broken glass. When lashed with the beastly instrument, the pieces would bite into the flesh, ripping it away when the person wielding it pulled back for another blow.

He reached his hand out and touched her side, where streaks of yet more dried blood had decorated the flesh around the large puncture wound in her side. He swallowed back the bile that was quickly rising in his throat. Who would do this? Who? He raised his eyes again and shook his head, only now noticing the nails that had been driven into his sister's skull in lieu of the crown of thorns. So this was where the blood on her face had come from. Milliardo's body froze, but his mind was racing. He knew simple anatomy, enough to know that after death no bleeding occurred. Bleeding required a pumping heart. Whoever had done all this to his sister had done it while she was still alive. Milliardo stepped away, catching sight of the perfectly scripted message painted above her on the wall in blood, "Queen of the World". He felt then the panic rising as he stumbled back, at last finding a voice. He raised that voice in a long, lasting scream.

* * *

Hiiro frowned as his laptop beeped at him from across the table, indicating that he had new email. It wasn't from any address he was familiar with. His frown deepened when he leaned closer and saw that the email was in video format. None of the scientists ever used video email, and Hiiro didn't know too many other people, so who could this mysterious person be? Fingers flew over the keyboard, opening the email. The dark screen popped into existence. Then the screen fuzzed and revealed the visage of none other than Prince Milliardo Peacecraft.

**"You must be wondering how I found you address, Hiiro Yui. I'm certain you can figure that out for yourself, so I won't waste time telling you."**

Hiiro noticed the dark shadow that hung over the man's face, one that wasn't simply a scar of battle.

**"Hiiro,"** Milliardo's image sighed and looked away, **Relena's dead. She was murdered some time last night. I . . . I found her this morning."**

The boy, always so stoic, froze as the realization of hat Milliardo's words meant washed over him.

**"You know as well as I do that as soon as word reaches the general populace there will be an outcry and a demand for the killer. I want the murderer caught before that happens, but I can't do it on my own. I need help. Namely, your help." **The Milliardo on the screen learned forward with a desperate expression on his tight face, **"You and the other pilots are the only ones who can help me. Please, Hiiro. I know we haven't been allies in the past, but this is more important that old grudges." **Tears shimmered on the princes cheeks, **"My sister is dead. I want the killer."** The video cut of abruptly, leaving Hiiro staring wide-eyed and horror-stricken.

After all of this time, after all of the moments he'd failed to kill her, after he'd finally decided to protect her and her noble if idealistic dream . . . Relena was dead. Someone had killed her and he hadn't been there to stop it as he'd promised himself he would.

_Stop,_ he told himself quickly, _this isn't about your warrior pride or your grief. It's about a world leaders who is dead. There is an assassin out there._

Abruptly, before he could even begin to change his mind, Hiiro sent Milliardo a text reply in which he agreed to travel to Sanch and seek out Relena's killer. He made no promises concerning the others; they would make that decision for themselves.

Hiiro spun his chair around to face his vidphone. He dialed the first number to come to mind.

"Yes?"

Hiiro blinked. That subdued inquiry was not the expected reaction to his call.

"Duo?"

"Hiiro." The braided one spoke his name in low tones, completely opposite his usual demeanor. In fact, he didn't sound too happy to hear from an old friend.

"We have a mission." Hiiro hoped that perhaps this would elicit a standard Duo response and set the universe back on track.

"Mission? You're still running around Earth and the colonies doing odd jobs for your adopted scientist daddy? How quaintly Hiiro-ish."

**_TILT! _**Hiiro's brain screamed at him as Duo's calm and condescending face glared at him through the screen. The former Wing pilot shook his head and decided to trudge on stubbornly, as he always did.

"Duo, you don't understand—"

"I don't have to, Hiiro. You want me to scamper about with you as you perform some monkey show for your puppeteer. I'm afraid I have more pressing business."

And he cut the connection.

Hiiro sat a moment, his entire world and everything he knew suddenly brought into question. Duo had cut him off, saying he was too busy for a mission. Duo. Duo _Maxwell._ The Duo who always ran to the vidphone whenever he heard it ringing, who was always only too happy to "scamper about" with the pilots on some adventure or another. Hiiro knew he should call Wufei. Wufei would know what to do. But Hiiro paused before hitting the quick call button to Wufei's office. What if the universe really _was_ insane and Wufei answered with a grin and a giggle? He shook the unpleasant thought violently from his mind and pressed the button despite the worry growing in the pit of his steel stomach. The familiar scowling visage of Chang Wufei took over the screen.

"What is it, Yui? I'm busy."

Now THAT Hiiro was accustomed to.

"I received a message from Ze—Milliardo Peacecraft a few minutes ago. Relena was murdered."

"Impossible," Wufei spat, probably more pompously than he realized, "I would have heard about it."

"Milliardo is keeping it quiet from the citizens, which means he's keeping it from the Preventers."

"Damn."

"He wants us to help find the killer before the secret leaks."

"I assume you're going to Sanch," the Chinese boy stated with a disapproving frown.

"Yes. I want at least one other person with me."

"If I leave here with no warning and no explanation, it will be questioned and that wouldn't help Peacecraft's efforts. I must remain here."

"Agreed."

"I also assume you're calling Quatre next." For some unknown reason, Quatre was the only one of them Wufei seemed to respect enough to call by first name. "He should be the one to go with you."

"I agree. His empathic ability would be a great asset."

"And Barton can go after any suspects." Wufei eyed Hiiro carefully. "Do you _have_ any suspects yet?" Hiiro turned to his laptop and brought up a few files that, while being important before, only had one use now.

"There was a delegation from L9 that arrived this morning before Relena's body," his throat constricted as he said those words, and he had to clear his throat before continuing, "before Relena's body was found. I'm thinking they sent someone early."

"It's possible." Wufei nodded. "Send Barton to L9 to see if he can find any evidence of treason or malice towards the United Earthsphere. Tell him I'll be sending him official Preventer traveling papers. He's on Preventer business as far as they know."

"Alright."

"And Yui."

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

Wufei's face dissolved then into the blank black plane of an off screen. Hiiro felt the lump in his throat return and wondered again if the universe weren't completely out of whack.

* * *

Trowa left the side of his bed-ridden koi only once that day, and it was to answer the vidphone when Rassid came to inform him of who was on the line. Of course Quatre wanted to go and speak with Hiiro himself, but both Trowa and Rassid had flatly refused to let him out of bed. Trowa left the tall, burly Maguenac guarding over the delicate Arabian and proceeded downstairs to the waiting image of Hiiro Yui.

"Hiiro."

"Trowa."

It was the standard greeting between the two least talkative of the former Gundam pilots, something they were quite comfortable with. Trowa saw the first beginnings of grief tingeing the normally emotionless boy's face and knew what this call was about.

"You're calling about Relena," he said, relieving Hiiro of the need to say it, "We already know. Quatre felt it happen. He's extremely weak right now, but should recover."

"I wondered why he didn't respond; I asked for him."

"Of course, he's got more resources than I do, and his empathic ability doesn't hurt." Trowa didn't care that he had not been the true target of this call. It was all very logical.

"I'd like him to come to Sanch with me; Milliardo wants us to help with the investigation."

"He won't be going anywhere until—"

"I'll pack my bags the instant you two cut the connection." Quatre stood unsteadily on the stairs behind Trowa, Rassid behind him with an apologetic look towards the taller boy. The little blonde had a set determined expression on his tiny face and Trowa sighed inwardly. There would be no stopping him.

"And what about me?" Trowa asked instead of fighting with Quatre.

"You're going to L9 to investigate possible assassins there. Wufei will be sending you some Preventer visas, so you can be on official Preventer business." Hiiro looked a bit off-screen, towards his laptop most likely. "I'm emailing you a schematic of L9, the profiles of the top three officials, and records of the troubles the United Earthsphere has had with L9 in the past two years."

"I'll get them before I leave. Anything else?"

Hiiro's face suddenly took on a tight, guarded expression. It was as if he were experiencing an internal struggle, wondering whether to voice this concern or leave it unspoken as he so often did. Uncertainty shone in his Prussian eyes even as he came to his decision.

"Have either of you spoken with Duo lately?"

Trowa tossed a look backwards at Quatre, who shook his head and promptly clutched the stair railing tighter. He turned back to the waiting Hiiro.

"No, why?"

"Well . . . he was the first one I contacted and he just . . . he was acting very unDuo-ish."

UnDuo-ish? What sort of behavior was categorized as unDuo-ish considering the fact that the moods and attitudes of the braided one tended to change like the phasing moon? The only difference was that at least one knew what to expect from the moon's phases.

"Nevermind," Hiiro continued, brushing that concern away without even waiting for a reply from Trowa, "He'll get over it soon enough. You know what to do and where to go. Tell Quatre to meet me at Sanch Palace tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."

Trowa nodded and pressed the off button.

"You shouldn't be out of bed."

"Relena was basically the leader of the United Earthsphere. Perhaps someone else actually held that title, but the people loved and respected her above any of the other officials." Trowa turned around again in time to see Quatre bow his head and place a pale hand to his heart, "And she was our friend. We can't let her murder go unpunished, not only for the sake of the citizens, but for our own sakes. This is more important than me, Trowa."

"Nothing is more important than you." The words came out sounding very dry, lacking in the emotion one would think should be in them. But Quatre smiled, for he knew the emotion that was there, only hidden.

"I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm going to Sanch. Rassid, help me upstairs please."

"Of course, Master Quatre."

The huge man wrapped his massive hands about Quatre's tiny arms and supported him carefully as they began the tedious climb back up to the room where the blonde should have been resting but instead would soon be packing for a long and arduous trip to Earth. From the L4 colony cluster, that was quite a long way. Trowa bit his lip against the urge to call Hiiro back and say he wasn't going to L9 after all, he was going with them to Sanch. But no, Quatre wasn't nearly as helpless as he seemed, not even when as weak as he was after such a traumatic empathic experience. And he certainly wouldn't appreciate being treated as if he were.

The banged boy considered this problem as he climbed the stairs, heavy steps muted by the plush carpet. There was really only one solution then, one that Quatre wouldn't be too happy with, but would have to accept.

"Rassid," he said as he stepped into the room he and Quatre shared, "would you go with Quatre to Sanch and watch him at least until he has regained full strength?"

"Trowa—"

"Of course. I shall pack once Master Quatre is through packing."

"Rassid, I really don't—"

"It is my duty as a Manguenac to protect you, Master Quatre!" Rassid looked on the small boy as if Quatre were asking him to commit some great sin by letting him go alone. "I couldn't let you travel alone in your condition!" Somehow the rimrod straightness of his back and the determined way his arms crossed seemed to make him even more formidable than he was by simply being in a room. Quatre acquiesced by way of sighing. Trowa felt much better about leaving for L9.

* * *

Wufei scowled as he looked over the papers before him. If it wasn't the murder of a close and powerful friend, it was the theft of a highly dangerous and banned psychotropic drug. The work of a Preventer was never finished.

_Bio-extract X51173A_, read the top sheet, _is considered too dangerous for even laboratory use, let alone use by Earthsphere or colony civilians. All of the subjects who have fallen into comas as a result of the drug have yet to awaken. The first fell into drug-related coma ten years ago, in AC 187._

Human beings were so foolish, always creating things like this drug – he glanced to the paper again – bio-extract X51173A, a drug which had power that exceeded that of its creators. When they'd realized the jeopardy that their creation could put all of humanity through, instead of destroying it, they'd hidden it away in some "secret" military vault and hidden all the records of its existence. Obviously not well enough, for now Wufei had those records in front of him, and someone had gained enough knowledge to know where to find the drug in order to steal what remained.

"Worrying over Aurora?" the soft voice of his partner filled his ears and Wufei turned to face Sally Po.

"Aurora?"

"Apparently you haven't gotten very far in reading yet. Aurora is the nickname for bio-extract X51173A. Much easier to say, apparently." She smiled at him, laughter sparkling behind her eyes as it had even during the war two years ago, when they'd first met. He hadn't understood then how she could keep that undercurrent of humor in those dark times, and he still wasn't quite sure he understood.

"I had a phone call earlier; I just started reading."

"I know. Yui, Hiiro. Location unknown, phone number unknown, address unknown. I know several people who would like to be able to be as invisible and unreachable as that guy." Sally crossed her arms and leaned against the wall in a rather uncanny imitation of the former Wing pilot. A crack of a smile marred the perfect mask of cold irritation Wufei preferred, and he reminded himself to regret it later.

"You're too nosy."

"I have to be. It's the only way I ever learn anything around here." Her eyes pierced him into guilty reminder of his promise to be more open. A promise he sorely wished now he hadn't made quite yet.

"Sally I can't –"

"Why not? If it's something important, shouldn't the Preventers know about it?"

Wufei paused and swallowed. The Preventers really should know about the murder of Relena Peacecraft, but he had to admit that the brother was right to hide it so far. Hiiro and Quatre would be able to find the killer much more expediently on their own; the Preventers would only hang themselves up on protocol and get in each others way. Not to mention they'd have to deal with the backwash of rage from the civilians. Allowing the others to go about the investigation was, despite his training to the opposite, the best way to handle the situation.

But he was trying to build a bridge of trust, and perhaps more, between himself and this brave, even strong woman he'd come to respect in spite of his best efforts not to.

"It's alright, Wufei." Sally placed a hand on his shoulder and he looked up and into her smile, "If it's so important that you keep quiet about this, there has to be a good reason. Gundam pilots never do anything without good reason; I learned that two years ago."

"Sally –"

She waved him off with a flippant gesture and exited his office much the same way she had entered; quietly.

He gave a sigh and shook his head. He would never understand her. She wanted him to be more open, and when he had tried to let go of his pride and apologize for not being able to, she didn't let him! Women! Yet . . . he was grateful to her for not pressing the issue. She still surprised him sometimes at how much she knew without having to be told.

He wished he could have told her. But his bond with his fellow pilots was still stronger than the growing and indefinable connection between Sally and himself. She would have to wait before she could be considered worthy enough to share his deepest confidences.

Wufei rubbed his tired eyes underneath his fingers and settled his glasses back on his nose. The history and theft of Aurora awaited him. Somehow he felt an urgency to this case as well as the death of Relena. Something, some thin thread that he couldn't yet conceive, connected the two events in his mind. And so he read on long into the night.

End Chapter One.


	3. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** I don't have much to say. Enjoy.

**Disclaimers:** I don't own 'em.

**Wayward**

**Chapter Two**

Heat from the midday sun prickled the hair on the back of her neck, but not in a bad way. It was deliciously warm after several days cooped up in the house, and the birds singing all around made the scene only that much more enjoyable. She wanted so badly to get up and run, maybe find some kids her own age to play with.

Instead, Mariemaia looked up from her wheelchair and into the face of her guardian. Everyone else called the woman Lady Une. Mariemaia alone had the privilege of calling her Miss Une. No one knew her first name; it seemed she didn't have one. Perhaps she didn't like it. It didn't matter, because Miss Une was probably one of the nicest people she'd ever met. Considering most of the people she'd met had either wanted to use her or obey her, that wasn't very hard to believe.

"Miss Une, will you tell me again?" Mariemaia fidgeted as well as she could with two barely functioning legs.

"Tell you what?" asked the woman softly, though the girl knew she didn't need to.

"About him. My father." The question was one she asked almost every day. The story always started out the same, but inevitably Une related something in the new telling that she had omitted in previous ones.

"He was a good man, no matter what others may say," began the Lady Une, who had known him better than most, "he really only wanted what was best for the colonies and for Earth. He was just confused about the way to go about it until the end." Une stood behind her chair, but the girl knew anyway that tears were flowing down the woman's cheeks. They always did. "He lead the OZ specials force hidden within the Alliance Military, and His Excellency was loved by all of his soldiers, even though only a few found the courage to remain loyal to him once Romafeller took over." And so the story continued, and once more Mariemaia found something new within it, something to help her understand the man who had fathered her. When the story ended, the two remained silent for several minutes, both gazing at the stone before them but thinking different thoughts.

"We almost always meet this way," a voice, familiar, interrupted their silence. Mariemaia turned a smile towards the woman she didn't necessarily like, but felt she had to be kind to anyway.

"Hello, Miss Dorothy."

"Miss Mariemaia," replied the platinum girl, with that same note of sarcastic reverence as always. Dorothy never really respected anyone, and she really wasn't all that good at pretending she did. But as Mariemaia looked on her, there seemed something slightly different about the conniving Catalonia this day. "Paying your respects to Mister Treize?"

"Of course," Une responded, voice a bit cold. She never appreciated being interrupted while thinking about Treize.

"As always. I came to honor Mister Milliardo." Dorothy leaned over and placed the flowers over the second, bodiless grave. "I know it seems silly, now that everyone knows he's alive. But I feel he deserves to be honored, dead or alive, and I feel more comfortable doing it here." She was pale, Mariemaia realized, pale and shaking.

"Are you alright, Miss Dorothy?"

"What?" Dark eyes flickered to the little girl, fear shining in them for just the briefest of moments. Then the glimmer of false respect returned and Dorothy seemed to gather her control. "I'm fine, Miss Mariemaia. You shouldn't worry about me when you have your own problems. How are your legs? Getting stronger?"

"Yes. I'm working on trying to walk again."

"Enough." Une jerked her wheelchair back and away from the blonde woman, much more roughly than necessary. She seemed in that second almost like a different person, harder, colder. "Mariemaia's return to health is no business of yours. Good day, Miss Catalonia."

"Good day, Lady Une, Miss Mariemaia." The silky voice followed them long after they had left the graveyard, and Mariemaia found that she couldn't erase from her mind the expression of terror in which the woman had looked at her. What could have frightened Dorothy Catalonia so much?

Quatre looked up at the seemingly cold and lifeless palace. The throbbing in his head had eased somewhat during the trip to Earth, but as he confronted the scene of the crime the pain returned full force. He wanted to think of it as needle-pricks all around his skull, but needles were too small to explain away this agony. His wrists throbbed as well, and his ankles. In fact, his entire body hurt, because tendrils of pain snaked from his back around his sides. _Sweet Allah, what was done to Relena?_

"You okay?" asked the Prussian eyed youth at his side. It was so odd, to turn there and not see Trowa, but Hiiro.

"I'll be fine." He left it at that, not wanting to explain that he was feeling what was left over of Relena's pain. "Let's go in; they're expecting us, aren't they?"

"Should be," Hiiro grunted. They started up the entryway stairs, the front door to Sanch Palace looming before them, promising a dark and grisly scene within its boundaries. The two sentries standing at the doors were slumped, faces tight and mourning. Apparently the palace staff had been told. They couldn't be kept in the dark. After all, these were some of the closest people to Relena, other than her brother and the pilots.

"Where can we find Prince Milliardo?" Quatre phrased his question gently.

"He should be in the . . ." the speaking sentry paused to collect himself, then continued, "the palace morgue."

Quatre answered by way of nodding and he and Hiiro passed quickly through the doors, not quite dealing with their own pain yet, let alone able to help someone else with theirs. They followed the line of grieving servants pointing them the way, and before they were truly ready, they reached the palace morgue. Milliardo stood just outside the door, head bowed, platinum hair hiding his face. His head lifted slightly at the sound of their two footsteps coming towards him, and Milliardo turned his solemn face to them.

"You're prompt. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything less from former Gundam pilots."

"Do you want us to inspect . . . the body?" Hiiro asked, pausing to consider whether to use her name or not and deciding on not. Quatre's jumbled empathic powers couldn't tell him whether he did this for Milliardo's sake or his own.

"Y-yes," the prince's voice quavered, "our doctors decided not to run an autopsy until you arrived. Any evidence gained from it will be turned over to you. I'm going to warn the both of you now," his face seemed to sag with the weight of what he had seen, "it . . . it's rather disturbing."

"We can handle it," stated Hiiro with a certain amount of stoic pride. He liked being known as the "Emotionless Wonder" as some people called him, and liked his reputation for being able to cope with the most gruesome of scenes. Quatre had to wonder, however, whether the fact that this was Relena's murder and Relena's body would affect the former Wing pilot more than he suspected.

"Then go in." Milliardo moved aside to allow them entrance into the cold, sterile place known as the morgue.

Relena was lying on a standard metal morgue table, naked and exposed. There was no sheet as Quatre had expected, perhaps because the doctors were simply waiting to perform the autopsy. As he let his eyes wander over her body, he took in not the most private places her clothing had hidden, but the tell-tale marks of her death. The large, gaping holes in her ankles and wrists had been cleaned, as had her pale face and the wounds at her sides. But her head . . . oh Allah, her head . . .

"I'm sorry you had to see that," stated a voice behind him, startling the little blonde ever so slightly, "but I haven't figured out yet how to take them out without causing even more damage to her skull, perhaps deformity." The voice belonged to a rather young looking man, with mussed brown hair and intense eyes behind his round glasses. His white lab coat was stained a sickly blue by the morgue lights, and there was a collection of many different types of pens taking up residence in his front coat pocket. "You're the famous Gundam pilots, I assume." He stuck out a hand that was much too large for his wiry body. "I'm Doctor Albert Galer; I'll be performing the autopsy." Those bright, deep eyes flickered to Hiiro before returning to their gaze at Quatre. "Are you two sure you want to be here for this?"

"We can handle it," Hiiro repeated before Quatre could say anything.

"Alright, since you're Gundam pilots, I'll take your word as absolute law." Galer flashed a quick, amused wink towards Quatre before brushing past them. Quatre couldn't suppress his smirk. He liked this doctor, even if he were going to be cutting open one of Quatre's friends soon. "Here you are," Galer said as he tossed each of them a set of flimsy green surgical gowns and masks. "I have to insist you wears these; I'm also an embalmer, and I'll be doing that right after the autopsy. Why waste time, right?" Then the doctor grumbled something under his breath that Quatre thought might be a curse against Milliardo for hiding the death of Relena from the public. "That embalming fluid can really stink up a place, and it's probably not the best thing to inhale too much of it. I won't insist you stay for that part unless you really want to, but wear the masks just in case."

Quatre knew he wasn't going to stay, but couldn't speak for Hiiro. So instead he asked the question darting around his tired mind. "You don't agree with Milliardo, do you?" Galer shook his head.

"No, I don't. The citizens of the Earth, and especially of Sanch, have a right to know that their most beloved leader is dead."

"But he's only hiding it until the killer is found. He wants to be able to tell his people that a horrible thing happened, but the person was caught so it won't happen again."

"What does it matter?" Galer asked as he set up his tray of tools, "It's already happened. Relena Peacecraft is dead, and hiding that fact until the assassin is found won't change it, or make it any better. It only implies that the general populace is not mature or evolved enough to handle this situation in a decent manner."

"Look at the wars two years ago," grunted Hiiro, who had been silent up until this point.

"What?" Galer turned an appraising eye to the boy.

"Two years ago when the Earth and the colonies were at war, when OZ controlled all of outer space, the colony citizens were all too willing to believe what they were told. When we tried to go home to them, they called for our captures and executions, all because OZ had told them we were the enemies. The people of Earth didn't spare us any mercy or compassion, either. We were outcasts. I say that people haven't changed much in two years, and Milliardo is doing the right thing." There was a pause, where in the silence Quatre wondered what they would do if Hiiro had insulted this kind yet intelligent doctor. Then Galer's face broke into a great grin.

"You don't talk that often, but when you do you know what you're talking about. I like that." He snapped on a pair of latex gloves almost cheerfully. "Shall we begin?"

An hour passed. Quatre didn't know how he managed to remain in the room with Relena's body. Galer checked over her external wounds and made notes, both on paper and on tape. He also took tissue samples from underneath her nails. Then Doctor Galer had used a scalpel to slowly slice open the skin and muscle of her chest. Quatre had to look away when he cracked her sternum and spread her ribcage, and he'd noticed Hiiro looking a bit pale beneath his surgical mask. More than once the little blonde asked him if he'd wanted to leave, but every time Hiiro refused. He was, it seemed, determined to see the entire thing through.

"Extensive internal tearing and bleeding in the tissue surrounding the wound on the patient's right side." As soon as he'd begun taking notes, Galer's expressive voice had dulled to that monotone he was expected to speak in for his records. "No other obvious internal injuries. Conclusion: patient was not beaten in any area other than the face." He paused. Then: "The problem still remains of how to remove the protruding nails from patient's skull without causing further damage."

"Stop." Quatre and Galer both looked up at Hiiro's sudden order. He was still pale and shaken, beads of sweat condensing on his forehead.

"Do you want to leave?" It was the first time the doctor had asked, apparently assuming that if the boy wanted to leave he would do so on his own. "I can't just stop the autopsy in the middle –"

"Stop calling her 'patient.' Her name was Relena. She isn't just a random corpse in your drawers. Don't treat her like her identity left when she died." Hiiro paused and Quatre could hear the hiss as he sucked in a deep breath. "Everything she was is still here, and I won't let you keep referring to her as 'patient.'"

"I'm sorry, Hiiro," and Galer truly did sound remorseful, "but I have to, for the purposes of the record. My boss wouldn't like me using the . . . Relena's name in my official report."

"Then just send the final copy to me." Hiiro turned and left, tugging off his mask as he went, something shining deep in his Prussian eyes. Quatre didn't know what to think; this situation was bringing out more in the former Wing pilot that he had ever dared to think could exist in that stoic frame. There were emotions radiating from him that Quatre couldn't begin to place, because most were wrapped in a thick blanket of confusion, as if Hiiro's perplexity were the only thing keeping him sane.

"Will he be alright?" Galer's bright eyes bored into Quatre from across the autopsy table, Relena's open chest cavity gaping beneath them.

"He'll be fine," the Arabian replied, "he's resilient."

"Good, because as much as I like you both, I can't change the way things are for you." He gave a slightly sorrowful smile, "I'm not a changer of worlds, like Gundam pilots."

"How sad."

Wufei stared at the ceiling in that way he had when he pondered some particularly disturbing problem. Only an hour ago he'd ordered the surveillance tapes from the military bunker where Aurora had been stolen from. Rarely did a case ever turn out to be so easily solved, but it couldn't hurt to have a look at the tapes. Who knew, perhaps their thief would turn out to be an amateur.

But what weighed most heavily on his fatigued mind was not this random theft, but the secret crime which he could not reveal to any of his comrades. Not even his partner. He sighed and pulled the glasses from his nose, depositing them lightly on top of the papers littering his usually well-organized desk. On a normal basis his work space was compulsively neat; however, the Chinese boy had too much on his mind to worry about where his 'in' and 'out' boxes were situated.

"Wufei?" The worried lilt of Sally's voice greeted him from the doorway. The older woman was leaning inside, brows knitted together as she viewed the state of her partner's desk. "It's late. Are you ready to go?" She referred to the fact that he usually walked her home, unwilling to allow her to go alone. For a moment he allowed himself to weigh the pros and cons of each decision in his mind before his natural protective instinct for anything female won over his God-given right to privacy. He sighed and glanced over the desk one last time before reaching over and clicking off the small green lamp overlooking the mess.

"Let's go." He tossed the Aurora files haphazardly into his briefcase and set off on their nightly ritual. As usual they were the last out of the building, therefore the locking responsibility fell to them. Once Preventer Headquarters was nice and snug for the night, Wufei and Sally turned right and began to trek down the orderly colony streets towards her home. His was in the completely opposite direction.

"Full day?"

"Yes." He didn't answer her unspoken question, and he was sure she had known he wouldn't. But it just wouldn't do for Sally to give up on something so easily, even if she knew he had a reason for keeping silent. It just was not her way, as talking too much was not his. So he compromised. "I think there's a connection between two cases the officials think are unrelated." He didn't bother to clarify that the officials didn't even know about one of them.

"Oh?" It was a classic Sally-ish open-ended question, designed to make him feel as if he should say more. He ignored it.

"You've done something different with your hair," he said instead, and the question did its job by catching her off guard.

"I didn't think you'd even notice," she replied with a small smirk. "It's not dramatic or anything." And it wasn't. In lieu of her normal twin twists, Sally Po had her hair in a loose bun on top of her head, several ringlets spilling down around her face. He rather liked the way those strands framed her features, making them look more delicate than they were. In fact, the style gave Sally a generally softer appearance that made him really see her. Not as a Preventer, as he had become accustomed to, but a woman.

_Damn . . ._

He'd seen it coming. Slowly, nothing sudden or intense, but a gradual change both in her and in himself that made such a match possible. Her strength was not limited to the battlefield anymore, but extended into her everyday work and life. He no longer felt the need to hide the smallest details of his life from her, though there were still some secrets he preferred to keep locked away for now. And now this physical change, a difference in her that he could almost imagine was deliberate. Was she trying to make him think of her this way?

"Wufei –"

"I know, I've been quiet," he began to apologize, but she cut him off.

"That's not it. You're always quiet. It's just that we're here." She raised an eyebrow as he looked up, startled to see her house before them so quickly. The walk couldn't be over yet. He'd barely begun to look at her, and now it was time for her to leave his gaze for the night.

No. A night was too long.

"Sally . . ." the tentative sound of his own voice astonished the Chinese boy. By Allah, as Quatre would say, he was seventeen years old, a former Gundam pilot, and a Preventer for the Earthsphere Alliance. Why was this so hard for him?

The woman smiled and reached for his hand.

"Come on in." She swung open the gate, inviting him into her home. It wasn't the first time she'd given this invitation, but it was the first time he had initiated the asking and the first time he would accept. He nodded and without saying anything stepped into the boundaries of her home. She followed, shutting the gate in a hurried motion as if afraid that if she left it open he would change his mind and bolt for freedom.

"Come, Onna." He looked at her with fierce eyes, the command an unconscious attempt at regaining some semblance of manly control over the situation. Sally, however, was not to put up with that sort of thing.

"We're going to have to work on this whole 'onna' thing, but in the mean time, understand this: it's my house. That means _I'm_ in charge and we go by _my_ rules." With that she grabbed his hand and dragged him, not exactly kicking and screaming, into what was sure to be a fate much sweeter than Death.

Hiiro sipped his coffee carefully, cursing a bit when it burned his tongue anyway. Not only was there cream and sugar in what he had specifically said should have been black coffee, the mess was scorching hot as well. Either the kitchen staff was grieving over Relena's death, or they were just plain incompetent.

One of the machines hooked up to his laptop beeped, a red light beginning to blink furiously. _Good, at least the test is done. _For the past six hours he'd been waiting on the results of the DNA tests he'd run on the tissue samples taken from Relena's fingernails. The beeping meant that the machine had analyzed the DNA pattern of the skin cells, run them through the records of every person on file for any sort of crime at all, and come up with a match. Hiiro grunted, almost disappointed at how simple this had been. Why couldn't the Sanch officials do this on their own? Were they all _that_ unused to violence of any sort?

Hiiro turned the laptop to face him, prepared to look upon the face of the assassin.

Any face at all.

Except the one he saw.

"No . . . it can't . . . shit."

End Chapter Two.


	4. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes:** You know, I REALLY hate the new system on this website in many ways. I hate the new posting system, that removes all formatting and especially all the scene dividers. I hate that it removes all links. I hate the banning of NC-17 material. I just hate the whole thing, really. Unfortunately, it's the place to be and the place to get read.

I'm a sellout.

**Disclaimers:** I dun own em.

**Wayward**

**Chapter Three**

She felt like using her nails to rip him open as he rolled away from her. He never stayed close to her afterwards, a silent statement on his true feelings. _Feelings?_ She thought violently, _There are no feelings left under that human skin. _He looked so unchanged on the surface, yet beneath that thin layer of human flesh there lurked something so vastly removed from human she wanted to scream every time he touched her. Still . . . the excitement of what he'd promised and the beginning burden of her own mortal emotions made it difficult for her to even think of leaving. _How could you even wonder if . . . _she left the thought unfinished, as she had for the past few weeks.

Weeks. Six to be exact. Six weeks since Death had come knocking on her door and Dorothy Catalonia had flung it open wide to offer an invitation. She still wasn't exactly sure why, but she suspected that it hadn't been entirely her own doing. And since then a whirlwind of things had happened: dinner parties, his silent plans, business meetings, his sometimes violent behavior, and nights with just the two of them alone. But always, at the end of those nights, he moved away from her. Each time he did that he left her more empty than the last time, and she knew what danger that could mean for her.

"Duo?"

"What?" his answer was an exasperated half-sigh.

"Why . . ." she swallowed, and felt the first tinges of nervousness ever in her life. Could she really ask him this? Why bother? She knew the answer without asking . . . "Why do you always leave? Don't . . . don't you love me?" _Damn, I sound so weak. I sound like every other damned girl on the planet. _

He paused, and she could tell by the expression on his sometimes calm, sometimes torrent face that he was considering whether to answer or to ignore her or perhaps return her question with brutality. She hoped not the last.

"Dorothy," he said at last and the words dripped like honey from his lips, "don't ask me something so silly." He leaned just close enough to her to place a hand, deceptively gentle, on her cheek. His eyes tried to profess false feeling, but they were too dead to manage the feat. "I need you."

Before she could begin to formulate a response, the bedside vidphone rang loudly, garnering his attention away from her with every ring. He pushed her down into the soft folds of the mattress.

"Be still and be quiet." The tone of his voice left no room for disobedience. He turned completely over towards the table and, with his body shielding any view of her from the screen, he finally tapped the answer button. "Hiiro. A person just can't get away from you, can he?" He sounded annoyed, but Dorothy knew that he hadn't truly been trying to cover up his whereabouts. If he had, not even Hiiro could have found him.

**"Duo . . ."**

The other boy sounded pensive, almost afraid. Dorothy wondered if it could be a different Hiiro. The former Gundam pilot was supposed to be trained as the Perfect Soldier and as emotionless as one can be. This did not sound like an apathetic warrior.

"What is it, Hiiro? Time is wasting and I really am very busy, as I told you before."

**"I found something while investigating Relena's death and I need to ask you about it."**

_Relena's . . . death? _Dorothy couldn't help the gasp that issued from her lips at that news. It couldn't be! Relena couldn't be dead! Because if she was then Dorothy was to blame . . .

"Ask away."

**"There were skin cells underneath her fingernails, where she scratched her assailant. I ran a DNA test on them." **Dorothy's eyes fell to the thin, healing claw marks on Duo's neck. **"You're the match, Duo."**

"Me?" That velvet smooth voice, a chuckle, so dark, "Hiiro, you know me better than that, don't you? Or at least I thought you did. But that wasn't a question. Ask your question so I can get this over with and return to my work."

**"Did you kill Relena?"**

"Did I kill Relena?" Dorothy shuddered at the mocking tone, the spines of poison that radiated from every word and the intent she saw behind his eyes every time he looked at her or even when he didn't. "I don't know, Hiiro. That's a very personal question. I don't know if I should answer that."

**"Duo, what's wrong with you? You've been acting odd since I called the other day and now this. I'll testify for you in court if you answer me, but if you don't then there's nothing I can do." **Hiiro sounded almost desperate at that last, pleading with his friend to give him some sort of way to help him. **"You know that the people of Earth, even Sanch, will call for the murderer to be executed." **He didn't say "your execution." Dorothy wondered if all perfect soldiers suffered from denial or if Hiiro was simply going soft after a year without battle.

"I know that, Hiiro," Duo said, heaving a great sigh, "but it doesn't concern me. I am, after all, Shinigami. They can't execute me." _He just practically told Hiiro he's guilty! _But she knew that what he said was true. They couldn't execute him. He couldn't die.

There was the obvious sound of a vidphone being clicked off, and only when he turned back to look at her did Dorothy realize that she'd been crying.

"Why?" she whispered so softly she wondered if even his ears had heard her.

"Why what?" Innocence was something he could still feign if he really wanted to, and he did it now as he stroked her wet cheek.

"Why did you kill her? You didn't tell me you were going to kill her!" Guilt overrode any sense of shame she had at sobbing so openly. "You told me you were just going to talk to her!" Through her blurred vision she saw the grin again, the one that had seemed only mischievous in the picture on his file, but had a darker quality to it now that he was . . . different.

"If I had told you what I planned, you wouldn't have agreed, now would you?" He spoke as one would to a child, the condescending tone grating at her spine even as she convinced herself that he didn't mean it to sound that way. "I needed to get into Sanch Palace without being seen, and you were the only person I knew who could do that."

"You tricked me."

"I never actually told you I was only going to talk to her." He grinned again, dropping a soft but so enticing kiss on her lips.

"You let me believe it." Her voice was weak, losing strength as he trailed his lips down her chin and throat. Despite herself Dorothy felt her body shiver and the well of desire rise from the deep place in her heart that fortressed her reluctant yet burgeoning feeling for this man who could be so cruel. Somehow it didn't matter when he touched her. Somehow everything that he was and everything that he'd done just fell away into those moments when she could forget and pretend that she was a normal woman with a normal life, whose partner was a completely normal man worthy of her favor and her love.

* * *

Wufei's dark eyes flickered over the screen like black butterflies, taking in every single person who moved anywhere near the hiding place Aurora had been stolen from. So far he hadn't seen anyone even remotely suspicious. All of the people matched the photos taken for their employee files, which Wufei had beside him on the table.

He remained at Sally's, though he'd awakened much earlier than she and had the surveillance tapes forwarded to her address. He couldn't sleep when there was work to be done a theft to solve. For a moment, however, he allowed his mind to wander back into the bedroom and the woman sleeping softly inside. Not so long ago he would have insisted immediately that they marry, and the thought fluttered through the back of his mind. But he knew better. In the year since he'd last had to battle, and in which he'd gotten to know Sally, he knew that she would refuse him if he insisted, even if she wanted it. She would want him to propose out of love and not honor.

He smiled a small smile. Perhaps he would propose to her yet.

A small hand snaked over his shoulder and towards the keyboard, pausing the image on the computer screen. Wufei stifled his smile and put on his best annoyed mask. "You're interrupting my work."

"Work, work, and more work," Sally taunted him, her hair falling lose around her face and shoulders, "You work too much." Her hands played over his bare shoulders and his eyes closed without his permission. Her touch was so tender, sweeter than he ever imagined it would be. For a moment he was lost in that touch and forgot to give a curt reply. Then he regained himself.

"I work more than some people." He turned the chair around and took her by the hips, pulling her towards him and downwards, forcing her to sit. She wasn't small, still slightly taller than his seventeen year old frame, but her weight was a feather's as she settled herself straddling his lap.

"You work enough for an army of Preventers." Her face leaned slowly down to his, the tips of her hair teasing his skin, tickling just enough to be enticing. He had a hard time remembering that there was important information on the computer waiting for him. All of his attention focused on this woman who demanded not to be ignored.

"It's too . . . too . . ." but the word he searched for left him as her fingers trailed down his neck and brushed lightly over his chest. His head lazed back, a groan sliding through his slightly parted lips. She shifted in his lap, that movement alone enough to send shudders along his body. Damn her and her inherent feminine appeal. There was something he had to do . . . something important that needed his attention . . .

He felt the end of her tongue slide over his throat and he pulled in a breath. His hands, still at her hips, moved upwards and slipped beneath the thin white undershirt she'd pulled on sometime during the night. Arms curving about her waist, he pulled her closer into him. He could feel the heat of her body through the insufficient covering the shirt provided, feel her breasts pressing against him. His feelings, he knew, were true if he could feel this same excitement again so soon. After the night before she was still the most beautiful creature in existence, and he still wanted to hold her forever.

"Isn't that Dorothy Catalonia?"

"Huh?" He blinked. It took him a moment to bring himself into a state of mind capable of comprehending what she'd said. "Dorothy . . ."

"Yeah, on the screen." Sally rose from his lap. The lack of her against him was a sudden plunge from pleasure into emptiness and he released a whimper. He didn't care about the tapes, he just wanted her back in his grasp. "Look, there." She pointed to a person on the edges of the scene, a woman with long platinum hair and distinctive eyebrows. Staring at the face, Wufei finally began the return to coherence.

"It _is_ Dorothy." He tapped a few keys, bringing the face closer into view. "It's definitely her." Another key, and the scene resumed play, in which Dorothy proceeded to somehow sneak past the crowd of people milling about, into the locked and guarded room, and walk out with the container of Aurora. All without being spotted. "How did she do that? There were people all around her, and _none_ of them saw her? That's unbelievable!"

"Some sort of cloaking device?" Sally's eyes narrowed. All mischievous notions she seemed to have pushed back in the wake of this discovery.

"It's possible I suppose. But that type of technology is still in the testing stages. The device necessary would be bulky and hardly portable, if at all. But she isn't carrying anything going in, and only the container going out."

"So, there's some sort of rich mad scientist out there who supplied the money and resources necessary to develop a portable cloak?" She snorted. "Sounds like a bad movie."

"I know. But cloaks are supposed to make a ship invisible to cameras as well as the human eye. They obviously can't see her, but she's visible on the tape." Wufei sat back in his chair with a deep breath, going over this problem in his mind. At last he came to a decision, or at least a compromise. "It doesn't matter how she did it. All that matters is that we know who stole Aurora. I think it's time to make an arrest, don't you?" Sally nodded.

"Isn't she living on Earth now?"

"Hn," he replied, picking up on an old Hiiro habit. "I wonder if she could have anything to do with . . ." He stopped, biting his lip as his eyes darted to Sally's face. She gazed at him a moment before turning back to the computer and typing in a search command.

"There's her address. We should get going if you want to be the one to arrest her."

"Sally," he took her hand and turned her around to face him, "Relena was murdered two days ago. Milliardo contacted Hiiro to ask for help. Yui and Quatre are on Earth investigating, and Barton is on L9 looking for possible assassins."

He saw her pull in a breath as her eyes widened. She said nothing for several moments, letting the silence mask her inner thoughts. Her face was tight and there were tears lurking behind the surfaces of her eyes, but she didn't let them fall. At last she nodded.

"I see why you didn't tell me before." She sighed and placed a hand to her forehead as if to fight off a sudden headache. "But why did you tell me now?"

"We're as close as two people can be," he explained, surprised at the gentleness in his own voice, "I didn't think it right for there to be secrets between us after that." He felt her fingers tighten around his and knew that she agreed, even if she didn't say it aloud. Sally smiled then and pulled her hand from his.

"We should get dressed."

"We should," Wufei stood, reluctant to put on his uniform even though Dorothy needed to be arrested as soon as he knew about her involvement. He was so tempted to wait a couple of hours. "I'll get dressed in the bathroom."

* * *

Quatre flopped onto the bed, exhaustion spilling from his pores, almost visibly oozing over the fluffy white comforter. He'd stayed with Doctor Galer all night to observe the entire autopsy. Only when the doctor, who seemed never to need sleep, had begun the embalming process had he insisted Quatre leave to get some rest. They both knew he simply didn't want an amateur around trying to assist only to muck up. Quatre knew nothing about embalming, nor did he have a license to practice. And it probably would not have been the best thing for him to fall asleep on the morgue floor.

So Galer had pushed him out of the metal double doors and told him to go to sleep. That's how he came to be face down on one of Sanch Palace's glorious canopy beds. He wasn't even sure if this was his assigned room or not. It was just a comfy place to lie down and slip off into dreamland . . .

His dreams involved a hammer and a ring of rusty nails pounded into his head. He couldn't believe anyone would do such a thing, especially because he was still alive he wasn't dead yet and oh by Allah it hurt it hurt so much and his sides were bleeding and raw and now the nails were all in place but the Evil One wasn't finished because now he was being lifted and lifted and lifted and placed against a hard surface big nails were being hammered into his wrists OH ALLAH IT HURT HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME HOW COULD YOU I THOUGHT—

"QUATRE!"

Breath finally made its way into his starved lungs as he sat up into the strong hands that held his shoulders. His vision blurred, whether from sleep or tears he wasn't sure.

"Trowa, I had a nightmare. It was . . . oh Allah, it was horrible. I was being nailed to something-"

"Quatre, I'm not Trowa."

He blinked and looked up at the person above him. Hiiro, not Trowa looked back down at him. The boy released his shoulders and moved back, apparently satisfied that Quatre was safe without support. Hiiro picked up the laptop that lay on a nearby chair.

"I found something." His voice was strong, yet hesitant. The blonde Arabian sensed behind those words so carefully crafted a deep distress, verging on the edge of sorrow. He watched Hiiro tap away at the keyboard, bringing up whatever information he had to share. His face was set into the familiar Hiiro expression, but there was a tightness to it that betrayed the inner feelings Quatre so easily picked up.

"What is it, Hiiro?" he whispered, knowing that if the stoic one were so upset, the news truly was disturbing. The boy didn't reply, merely turned the laptop around so Quatre could see the screen. It took him a moment to figure out what he was looking at: the test results from the DNA scan. The screen showed one strand of DNA, that taken from beneath Relena's fingernails, and another strand, the match of the killer. His eyes searched over the screen, looking for the name of the person to whom this DNA belonged. At last, on the very bottom of the table that showed the two strands, was the name. "No . . . Hiiro, this can't be right!"

"I ran the scan five times."

"I'm sure he has an alibi—"

"I talked to him. He didn't truly deny it. He basically told me it was true."

"Allah . . ." Quatre leaned backwards, resting against the thick wooden headrest, placing his hands over his eyes. His head still throbbed from the dream nails; nails that he knew, now, were pounded into Relena's head by one of his best friends. "Why would he . . . it's just not him! He's not a murderer!"

"Apparently some things changed since he's been gone."

Gone. Quatre thought back to a year before, to after the destruction of Deathscythe and the other Gundams. Wufei had the Preventers. Quatre himself had not only the Winner Corp. but Trowa as well. No one knew what Hiiro planned, but he seemed satisfied with the death of Wing Zero and the end of battle. Only Duo seemed unsatisfied to go back to a normal life, a life in which he would take up Hilde's offer to co-own an L2 scrapyard. So instead he'd worked there a while, saving up money, and when he had enough he'd disappeared. A note left to Hilde told her that he was taking a luxury cruise around the Earthsphere and he'd be back whenever. Every so often, either on his own or at the request of Quatre, Hiiro would track down their friend and be certain he was alright. During none of those random checkups had there been any indication of any change in Duo or his mental state. Obviously they hadn't checked enough.

"We have to find him." Quatre finally rasped, "Have you tracked him down?"

"When I called an hour ago he was at a hotel on L3. When I checked again right before coming here, he and his guest had already checked out."

"Guest?"

"A woman. She checked in with him under the name Delilah Corinthians."

"Biblical names." Quatre sighed, "Obviously not her real name and Duo's idea of a joke. Do you have any idea who it could be?"

"I've got a hunch," Hiiro replied slowly, hesitation written on his face, "but it's very unlikely. I'd rather research it a little before saying anything."

"I understand."

* * *

Trowa checked his saved email again for the third time on his way to Earth. He hadn't been on L9 long when Hiiro had sent the update, and Trowa still couldn't believe the news it had brought. But at least he was no longer on L9, in the midst of so much anger and away from his beloved Quatre.

_Everything was fine, and now the world is insane, _he thought, unknowingly echoing the thoughts of his stoic friend from two days before. _If we can help Duo, we have to. He would never kill anyone if he were in his right mind._ Trowa lifted an emerald eye to the shuttle window, towards the far away globe that was Earth. Its blue and green surface, sprinkled with sparse litterings of desert brown, called to him. Like the rest of the pilots, he'd never been to Earth before the war two years ago. But once there, he'd felt like a wayward son coming home. Humanity ventured out from their planet, and made their houses on colonies, but there would always be some deep part of them that knew the Earth was their true home. He was glad to be going back after so long.

He leaned his lean frame back in the uncomfortable shuttle chair and closed his eyes. Yes, earth was nice. But soon enough he would be back in the arms of his koi. Earth, L4, the place didn't matter. To Trowa, wherever Quatre was, was home.

End Chapter Three


	5. Chapter 4

**I got lazy about reposting these old chapters. Here you go. Sorry about that.**

**Disclaimer:** Aw, you know Gundam Wing don't belong to me.

**Wayward – Chapter Four**

Hiiro sighed and tipped the bottle over once again, pouring thick brown liquid into a shot glass. Before his blurred vision swirled the DNA test results. For the seventh test. Even after he told Quatre that the test couldn't be wrong after five results, he'd run it twice more. Again the same answer appeared on his laptop screen. Again Hiiro Yui felt like yielding to complete disbelief and running the test just one more time. Just once. But this time he sighed, threw back the shot, and allowed himself to finally, totally accept the truth.

Duo Maxwell was a murderer. A cold-hearted, probably sociopathic, killer who was still out there. Who could tell where he would go next and what he would do. Duo could target any one of the former Gundam pilots next, or any myriad of innocent colonists or Earthsphere citizens. He had to be caught.

Quatre would not be up to the task. He was still weak enough from leftover empathic pain, from staying up all night with Doctor Galer, and from the news of the previous day. Trowa would arrive soon and his entire attention would immediately fall on the delicate Arabian. Wufei was the best choice in asking for help, but assistance from his corner may or may not come. _Only one way to find out . . ._ Deft fingers trailed the line of Wufei's office number, then he waited for the reply.

One ring. Two rings. Three.

After five rings the vidphone screen lit up with the face of a young, mousy brown-haired woman wearing thick black framed glasses. Her eyes didn't even lift from the paperwork scattered over her desk as she spoke.

**"Chang Wufei's office, Preventer Chang is currently out, may I take a message?"**

"No, I need to speak with Preventer Chang immediately."

The woman finally looked up, steel glinting suddenly behind her matching mousy eyes.

**"I'm sorry, sir," **she informed him with only the barest hint of politeness, **"but Preventer Chang can't be disturbed. I'm going to have to take a message."**

"Patch me through to wherever he is, or I'll do it myself."

**"Listen you rude little piece of—"**

That was the moment Hiiro decided to cut her off, seeing as her mood certainly wasn't a cooperative one. He quickly used his laptop to hack into Preventer Headquarters' system and find the area where Wufei's pass code had last been used. The prison area. Hiiro sighed and hoped he'd be able to talk to Wufei this time. The previous day Wufei hadn't even been at HQ.

**"Uh . . . Preventer Prison . . . er, whoever you are, could this wait?" **The young Preventer, probably a new recruit, stared back at Hiiro with wide, unsure eyes.

"Just tell Preventer Chang that Hiiro Yui is on the line to speak with him." The unknown face vanished. There was speech in the background; faint, barely audible mumbles, incoherent screeching from what sounded like a feminine voice, and the distinct sound of Wufei's loud voice booming out his anger. Soon enough the Chinese boy's face came into view, his golden skin somewhat flushed from some emotional or physical exertion.

**"Yui, I don't have time for this right now, I've got a situation."**

"Wufei, you have to listen to me—"

**"I'm sorry, but I've got an out of control prisoner and I can't talk right now. Call me later." **And the line went dead.

Hiiro sighed, leaned back, and poured himself another shot.

* * *

The little girl shuddered as Duo ran a hand over the gentle curls that blanketed her head. He smiled, unable to hide his joy at seeing her unchecked fear. Children were so much more satisfying than adults when it came to fear. Adults tended to have some silly notion of pride, of keeping their fright hidden as if that would make it go away. Children, however, shook and cried, called for their mommies and daddies because everyone knew that mommy and daddy were the strongest people in the world. But mommy and daddy never came, and then the fear only became stronger. Duo fed on this child's tears.

"Don't worry," he told her, his voice pleasant enough to calm her somewhat. Calm her, and there would be more fear later. Frighten her completely now and she would break down, faint, possibly become catatonic. "Don't worry little one, everything's going to be just fine."

"I-I want my mommy." It was a whisper, a small and terrified sound, but stated so simply and so trustingly. Duo smiled again and closed his eyes, trailing his hand over her soft, brown curls. She had the innocence of childhood, still young enough to trust in something higher than herself to protect her. Whether it be her parents, or the God they had told her about if they had chosen to do so, she had not yet grown old enough to begin to doubt. Somewhere inside a deep part of his mind missed the time, if there ever had been one for him, where things had been so simple.

"Didn't you know?" he asked her suddenly, "Your mommy's in Heaven." His eyes opened to gaze into her small face, to gauge her reaction, to feed on her fear if it arose.

"I know. Daddy told me. He told me she turned into a beautiful angel and she watches over me." Her little frame shrank away from his grown one. "She's gonna come get me soon and take me home." Her face scrunched into a pitiful expression, tears climbing over the wrinkled hills and valleys of her pained look. But still there rested a kind of defiance. A true and untainted belief that she would be saved. It bordered on adult pride.

"She isn't an angel," he growled, angry with the child for the faith she had that he had never truly known, "She's dead. That means she isn't alive, she's buried in the ground and she's gone forever!" Violence streaming from his pores, Duo grabbed the back collar of her pastel blue dress and dragged her to her feet. "And you know what? She's not going to come and take you home! And if you keep talking about her, if you keep being a bad girl, then I'll lock you up and never let you leave!" Without even pausing to drink in her tears, to appreciate her trembles, Duo snatched her through the doorway and into the room he'd fixed to house his precious little treasure. He tossed her tiny body inside, shut and locked the door. He took a deep breath, calmed himself enough to suppress his own shudders of rage. At last he pressed his hands to the wooden door and sighed. "You stay there, little one. I'm going out now. Maybe I'll bring Auntie Dorothy home. Would you like that?" Silence from within. "Well?" His tone grew more demanding and there was a small squeak from the other side.

"Yes, Uncle Duo."

"Good. You learn quickly, little one. I'll be back soon."

* * *

Wufei sighed and pressed his hand into his forehead. The weight of his fatigue let him believe that if he just pressed hard enough, his headache would go away and his prisoner would start being cooperative. But the pain persisted, and all he heard from the suspects corner was a faint whimpering. And so, the brave little Preventer sighed once more, and leapt back into battle like a dutiful soldier.

"Tell me, if you would Dorothy, why you stole the Aurora drug?"

"Because He told me to." Somehow the inflection in her voice led him to believe this person's title, like God's was meant to be capitalized.

"And who is 'He'?"

"I can't!" she screamed and lowered her head into her lap, placing pale hand over reluctant ears. "He'll kill me if I tell you!" The once proud form of Dorothy Catalonia sat reduced to a tightly curled ball in a prison cell. Wufei had never met her personally before this day, but somehow he'd always thought of her as strong and someone to be reckoned with, even as a woman. This was far from what he had imagined.

"But Dorothy," he tried again, clenching his teeth in his best effort to remain calm and genial, "I have to know his name if I'm going to arrest him. You obviously know he's a bad person. I would think you'd want him in jail."

"He'll kill me! You can't know how much pain He'll put me through if I tell you His name!" Pure, unadulterated panic flooded her dark eyes, and the Chinese boy saw so many things in those pools that he couldn't begin to name them all. "He'll kill me," the girl repeated for probably the thousandth time in the past hour.

"If you don't open up and start talking, I just might kill you," Wufei spat, despite the sick feeling left in his stomach by her words. What could she mean? It almost sounded as if she were not speaking of a mortal man at all, but some vengeful deity.

"At least you would shoot me, or strangle me, or maybe even burn me." Suddenly her dark orbs stared straight into his and the Preventer knew beyond any doubt that this woman was perfectly sane and perfectly terrified. "All of those deaths are painless compared to what he would do to me!" Dorothy glared at him angrily for a moment longer before sitting back and slipping once more into a frightened stupor.

Wufei felt as if his only expression of the day was an exasperated sigh. This entire investigation has him so frazzled even his neat ponytail fell out of place, creating an annoyance as he had to constantly brush hair back from his eyes.

"Dorothy, if you tell me 'His' name, then I can get some time shaved off your sentence. You can say he coerced into stealing Aurora. But if you continue to be difficult, you will go to trial for theft, treason, and who knows what else Preventer Une can come up with." Wufei paused to be certain she understood this and his reward was a widening of her already panicked eyes. "You face all of these charges yourself, and the full power of the sentence while this mysterious 'Him' gets to walk free. That's not right, Dorothy. You know that. It's not honorable and it's not justice."

The woman stared at him, and deep in her mind he could sense the gears grinding, the wheels turning, and for a good few moments the Chinese boy became convinced that he'd at last won her full confession.

"No. I can't."

He finally named one of those emotions.

"You're in love with him, aren't you?"

Dorothy refused to look at him.

* * *

"I _tried_ telling Wufei," Hiiro assured the newly-arrived Trowa, "but he cut me off. Said he had an out of control prisoner."

"You should have kept calling until he would listen to you." Trowa's slightly narrowed eyes were the only true indication of his concern over the situation.

"You know as well as I do how Wufei gets when he's interrogating a prisoner." Hiiro hesitated to stifle his anger, the flaring of emotions that became harder and harder to control with each day he spent in Sanch. "He could be in that cell for days without food, water, or sleep until he the person's confession."

Trowa nodded, his allotted allowance of words for the day seemingly spent. The two sat in silence the rest of the trip, passengers in the back of the pink limousine that Relena once enjoyed so much. Pagan drove up front, as silent as his two riders. Hiiro wondered if the old butler/spy felt the same loss of purpose as himself. After all, with the beloved princess dead, Pagan would no longer be truly needed as Milliardo tended to drive himself and employed his own spies. Where would Pagan go and what would he do? A question to which Hiiro wished he knew his own answer.

_It's almost as if I __**want**__ another war, _he thought, at the same instant knowing it to be the furthest thing from the truth. He would rather wander, a soldier without a battle, than find himself a useful tool again. Some things the human race needed, but a teenage weapon of total destruction was not one of them. The Perfect Soldier was obsolete, and glad of it.

At long last, the silence having become stifling, the large car turned into the more than wide enough driveway of the Sanch Palace. Quatre stood at the top of the massive entry staircase, Rassid and several servants at his side. Hiiro knew for a fact that, after the all-night autopsy, nightmare, and discovery of the true killer, Quatre was too weak to be out of bed. For that reason Rassid had ordered him left at the palace and sent Hiiro to greet Trowa at the shuttleport. Of course, however, the little blonde would not be trapped in bed while his koi arrived. Small he was, and frail at times, yes. But the person who thought Quatre Raberba Winner lacked backbone was a fool indeed. Hiiro had long rid himself of that particular misconception.

"Quatre," Hiiro grunted as he stepped from the car, careful to give a patented 'Hiiro Yui Death Glare,' meant to express in no uncertain terms his disapproval. Quatre waved this off in a haughty gesture he saved for those times he felt himself smothered in caring overprotection. The pale Arabian had yet to fall over dead from exertion, so Hiiro felt inclined to let this incident pass. Trowa, however, gave his koi a dark look, and a certainty hung between then that there would be a 'discussion' later.

"We need to decide what to do about Duo," Hiiro blurted, for lack of anything more subtle to say. The two lovers stand at him in momentary shock, but seemed to recover quickly. It appeared that they expected Hiiro to lack tact.

"I suggest, then, that we move inside." Quatre spoke with tale-tell Winner diplomacy and gestured them towards the door as if it were his L-4 mansion, not a dead princess' palace on Earth. A brief surge of fury barreled up from somewhere deep in Hiiro's gut. This was Relena's home, not Quatre's, and the blonde had no right to act as if it were. "Are you alright, Hiiro?" The stoic boy, nearly bubbling with rage, darted a glance at Quatre.

"Fine," he grunted, and no one paid any attention, for a grunt from Hiiro Yui was normal behavior, not an indication of anger. The four of them, including Pagan, piled inside the mansion to discuss their wayward friend and what to do about him.

* * *

Wufei took a break because something told him that this prisoner was going to be tougher to crack than the others. He was halfway to the mess hall when an alarm sounded: one long horn blare followed by two short ones and one more long. It was a specific sequence designed to alert Preventers that a prisoner was in the process of escaping.

"Damn!" Instantly the Chinese boy backtracked, running along his previous plodding footsteps. The alarm continued to peal above him the song of his impending loss of employment should he allow his prisoner to escape. As he neared the prison area he heard two voices. Dorothy Catalonia, screaming incoherently, and another, sickeningly familiar voice.

"This alarm is annoying, don't you agree, Dorothy?" A whimper from the woman. "I thought you would."

Abruptly, the alarms ceased.

Wufei's mind cried against the sudden absence of the blare, for the guard manning the alarm would not shut it off until the crisis was completely under control. He could think of no other reason for it to simply cease unless the alarms had simply broken, which was an impossibility considering the man hours spent maintaining them. He barged into the cell in the next moment, and came across an unlikely sight.

Duo stood in the center of the small space, dressed in a nice and expensive looking navy suit pinstriped with thin white lines. His dress shirt matched the color of his suit, and his tie was white set against that night-like background. White shoes and a large navy fedora completed the ensemble, and Wufei couldn't help but think that the boy looked like something out of ancient gangster movies. At Duo's feet sat a weeping Dorothy, hugging his legs desperately. She murmured under her breath, and though he couldn't hear the words, the Chinese boy knew somehow that she was praying. But not to God. She was praying to the boy whose legs she clasped. Duo reached down slowly, patted her on the head like a father soothing an upset child, and then looked up at Wufei.

"Wufei, good to see you." The sentence was far too insufficient, far too reticent for the lips of Duo Maxwell. And his eyes . . . beneath the laughing indigo of those orbs rested a deep crimson malevolence Wufei had not thought the braided one capable of possessing. "I knew you would be the first here if I allowed the alarms to go off for a certain length of time." This Duo Maxwell definitely held differences from the one Wufei knew; this one was dangerous to everyone, not just the enemy. "But now it's time for Dorothy and me to be leaving. If you'll excuse us." He lifted the woman to her feet using one hand and in a deceptively gentle manner began to lead her forward. Against what he knew to be better judgement, Wufei stepped forward to completely block the cell door.

"Duo, you know I can't-"

"Ah, Wufei, this is why I chose you to be my witness." The impish grin so customary on Duo's boyish face spread into a menacing expression unlike anything on any criminal Wufei had ever seen. Behind him he heard the clamor of other Preventers closing in, but in his gut he knew that all of the Preventers in HQ would not be enough to stop this abomination. "The others might hold back, might try to analyze me before moving in. You, on the other hand, will jump right in with no head at all on your shoulders and sacrifice your blood and life all in the name of justice." Wind . . . where was the wind coming from? It swirled around the two figures, surging their hair upwards in an eddy of wild air. "But I'll spare you that humiliation today, Wufei, and trade it for another one. The pain of losing a prisoner, and not being able to do a damned thing about it."

A dead weight hit Wufei in the chest, a weight that had no source save for the strange wind that Duo seemed to control. The Chinese boy flew backwards, limp in the grip of the wind as a rag doll. He hit bodies behind him and knocked over the first line of approaching soldiers, creating a wall of writhing limbs and people to block the Preventers further down. Pushing against faces, arms, stomachs, and legs, Wufei finally managed to extricate himself from the pile and stumbled back to the cell.

Duo and Dorothy were gone.

End Chapter Four.


	6. Chapter 5

**I got lazy about reposting these old chapters. Here you go. Sorry about that.**

**Disclaimer:** Aw, you know Gundam Wing don't belong to me.

**Wayward – Chapter Five**

Quatre sensed nothing from the two boys sitting with him, not even Trowa. Constant strain on his empathy, and his own emotions, sort-circuited even his link with the one he cared most about. The feeling was strange; he was alone with his singular emotions for the first time with no one else's love or joy or pain intruding. Definitely strange, to feel the same aloneness that most of humanity felt. No wonder human beings could be so violent and cruel; they could never know the pain they inflicted on each other. Quatre knew he would feel whole again only when his abilities recovered.

"That won't work," the angry hardness in Hiiro's voice woke Quatre from his thoughts, "Duo's made it quite clear that he can be found only when he _wants_ to be found."

"Duo's a prankster," Trowa shot back, and an uncomfortable oddness rose in Quatre's chest from seeing the two most notoriously stoic pilots in the midst of a heated debate, "He's a prankster and a joker by nature, even if he's more violent than before. What do you think Relena's crucifixion was if not a sick joke? He will want to be found aga—"

Trowa had to stop speaking when Hiiro pushed over the table and charged. Long-contained fury finally flared in the eyes of a boy deprived of emotion and his rage made Trowa a matador to his bullish intentions. The acrobat dodged the first blind charge and the second, skillfully maneuvering farther from Quatre with each feint. But by his third time around Hiiro's training caught up with his anger and he lunged at Trowa, predicted which side the boy would dodge to, and spun to land a solid blow square in the center of the tall one's chest. Trowa staggered and stumbled into a bookcase behind him, sending a rain of books toppling down over the two of them. Quatre still sat in his chair, utterly surprised and lost without his empathy to guide and warn him.

What would cause Hiiro to snap like this? What emotions had risen to bolster and feed this fury he expressed now? Quatre desperately tried to answer these questions as the fight escalated into a battle between cold rage and frustrated ignorance. Trowa could no more bring Hiiro down than he could Quatre, not only because they were tentative friends, but because their identical training wouldn't allow it. Neither could he end this fight if he didn't know its cause. So what started it? What—

"Hiiro!" The little blonde launched himself forward, "Hiiro, Relena would be ashamed of you!" His recklessly thrown shout rewarded him with a pause from the Prussian-eyed boy and a blink of surprise. "She worked so hard for peace, on Earth and the colonies, and you're starting fights between friends."

"Relena . . ." Hiiro's voice cracked, though it retained that emotionless quality in which he'd always spoken her name. With a great shock Quatre realized that though his voice sounded the same, there were tears in Hiiro's eyes. He was changing just as much as Duo had, only in a more positive, if frustrating, way.

"Hiiro, this entire situation is putting a strain on the walls Doctor J programmed around your emotions." Quatre spoke softly, slowly, keeping Hiiro's attention while Trowa slipped out of the way. "You must have cared very much for Relena, even if that feeling was hidden behind blocks. Now something worse than terrible has happened to her. You saw the body, you saw the room, and you ran tests yourself." As Quatre spoke, Hiiro remained perfectly still and silent, absorbing it all as his eyes harbored tears he simply couldn't let go of. "You must have loved her. And with her death you've not only lost her, but a good friend. Duo was closer to you than any of us except Relena. Now you have to accept that he's a killer, and he's the one who killed her." The Arabian dared to step closer despite Trowa's quiet head-shaking. "It's enough to drive any person insane, Hiiro. You're not just any person, though. You're a young man who's had enough emotional strain in the past four days to break down those walls made to keep you apathetic to pain, your own and others. You aren't used to these emotions so you've let them control you, and you struck out at Trowa because he happened to say something that angered you. I can help you begin learning how to control these feelings that must be very strange to you, but only with cooperation."

"I . . . I . . ." Hiiro swayed, no longer bent on revenge for whatever it was Trowa had said. He'd moved on to recognizing his problem. "I don't . . . want this . . ."

"I know. You're used to not caring, hiding under a blanket of apathy and training. But you can't go back. The damage done to you emotional blocks is irrevocable." Quatre didn't pause to wonder if perhaps irrevocable damage had been done to Hiiro's psyche in general. "You have to learn to live like the rest of us now."

Hiiro collapsed to his knees. Quatre didn't dare touch him yet. The blonde caught Trowa's visible emerald eye and he saw in there the same disturbing realization he had come to.

Things were different. Forever.

* * *

Lady Une- Preventer Une to those who worked under her- stared at the report in her hand. Sent to her by email only minutes before, the document detailed the strange events that had occurred at Preventer HQ. With his usual efficiency, Preventer Chang had the report typed, emailed, and filed within as hour of the escape. And Une had to admit that reading his account gave her a wave of unwanted and uncomfortable chills. Wufei- she called him that in her mind, for she had come to think of him and the other four as younger brothers- was not a flighty person, nor one given to exaggeration. She could trust that what was said in this report rang of complete truth, even if it did deal with the supernatural and unexplainable.

Une sighed, tapped the papers on her desk to straighten them, then laid them flat on the surface and placed her face in her hands. The theft of the Aurora drug, probably her government's most secret shame, had left her frazzled enough. Sweet sleep, rest and relaxation along with some quality time with Mariemaia had seemed on the horizon with Dorothy Catalonia's capture. But her escape complicated things in more than one way.

"Dammit, Duo," Une whispered under her breath, "what happened to you? And what are you up to?"

Her eyes, dark with worry and fear, fell to her desk and on the particularly terrifying statement she had chosen to highlight in nightmarish neon yellow. It was written in Wufei's abrupt manner.

"Duo Maxwell's eyes were cold. No criminal I've ever seen has those

eyes. The closest I can come to truly describing them is to say they

were a demon's eyes."

Wufei, from all he'd told her, did not believe in demons. He believed only in the inherent evil in all people. For him to compare one of his closest comrades to a demon, the change in Duo must have been profound and infinitely frightening. A malicious Shinigami with powers such as Wufei described would be a true bane of all humanity. Une knew this; she had seen his OZ profile and heard him in battle. Should Duo ever turn that hatred and battle-lust on innocent civilians . . .

"_Dieu_ help us all," she murmured into her hands.

"I don't think he's listening."

Lady Une tried to spin in her chair before she realized that she was not in her office at HQ, but in a stationary seat in her Earth residence. By the time she figured out she must stand to turn, Une found herself unable to move at all. The same voice, such a cold voice, tittered with darkly amused pleasure.

"You've broken into the private home of Head Preventer Une," she declared with as much righteous authoritative fury as she could muster under the circumstances, "Surrender yourself now and I will see that the charges of treason are dropped. Otherwise, the action of assaulting the Head Preventer will be considered-"

"An act of war against the United Earthsphere. Yes, I know." The voice's owner dripped pure sarcasm over her carpet and she could tell he had no respect for her position or the government. "I didn't come here to attack you, my dearest Lady. I came for something else, but your appeal to your inattentive deity caught my attention." Une felt something brush against her ear. "You know God pays no heed to mere mortals such as yourself, don't you?"

Instantly she knew with whom she was dealing.

"Duo, stop this. I don't know what you're planning, but-"

"It's not worth it," he interrupted again, flinging himself around to face her. Bent over her helpless form, hands clenched over her wrists on the armrest and eyes wild, Duo looked every bit the demon Wufei had likened him to. "Nothing will be made better by my actions. Crime doesn't pay. I've heard it all, Lady Une, and I've chosen to ignore it all."

"What did you come for then?" She changed tactics, knowing that she would get nowhere trying to talk to him of right and wrong. At last Duo stood, releasing his vice-grip on her wrists. They ached, but she still couldn't move to rub them.

"I came for something very important. Very important to you, once important to others, now important to me."

"What are you talking about?"

A whimper from the doorway. Duo whirled to greet the newcomer, clapping his hands together in delight. Behind him, standing- _standing-_ was Mariemaia. Une gasped in wonder. Then she saw that none of her awe reflected in the child's eyes. Only fear. She wasn't truly walking or standing. Duo's strange power moved her without her permission, brought her here in the middle of the night, frightened. It was she the boy wanted.

"No!"

"Quiet." Duo waved his hand at Une, almost lazily, and she lost her speech. Mariemaia, with frozen wide eyes, whimpered again as he sauntered nearer to her. She'd seen him once before, not long after the war's end and her immediate recovery from her wounds. Then he'd been just as child-like as she and with disarming cheerfulness had won an instant place in the girl's heart. For her to see him now, see the crimson gleam in once kind eyes, and know that he planned to take her away . . . _She must be terrified! _Une longed to reach out, soothe her adopted daughter and hurt the one who threatened her.

"D-Duo?"

"Don't worry, Carrot. You'll have a playmate where I'm taking you, so you won't be bored. And as long as Uncle Duo is your keeper, you'll be able to walk, run, and play with her all you want. I can do that."

Une saw Mariemaia glance at her. In those blue eyes it was obvious that though the girl wanted to do those things, she did NOT want to go with Duo. The lady strained against the invisible cords binding her to her chair, but she had no chance to break something that was not solid to begin with. At last Duo smiled, laid a hand on the top of Mariemaia's head, and then they were gone. Une knew she hadn't blinked. They were simply . . . gone.

* * *

He picked up a small, gold framed photograph. Their smiling faces stared back at him, sharing the happiness of that long-passed day. Sunshine almost blotted out their two faces, but the details were forever imbedded into his mind. The man sighed. If only . . .

The picture sailed through the air, smashing into a far wall with colossal force. "If only's" were the past creeping into the present and would do him no good. None at all.

But as the last echoes of broken glass tinkled through his ears, sorrow and regret quickly drowned out anger. With another, more weighted sigh, he trudged to the fallen photo and picked it from the sharp debris, careful not to rip any part of his precious treasure. So absorbed was this man in the contemplation of much loved faces and time-frozen smiles that the insistent ringing of the telephone almost failed to penetrate his mind. He knew, however, the importance that might be carried on a phone line, and so the man shook himself from the burden of sadness and reached for the old fashioned, audio-only telephone.

"Yes?"

"You remember me, don't you, and what I have that belongs to you?"

He stiffened, recognizing the voice and its threat. The man swallowed.

"Yes."

"Then listen to me and listen carefully, because I finally know what favor to ask of you."

"And then-"

"Listen, do what I ask, and we'll see about returning what is yours."

* * *

Wufei's eyes drifted over the two people on his vidphone screen. Quatre's was set far back so that both he and Trowa could be seen, and the volume turned up so they could be heard. The Chinese boy frowned to see the obvious absence of the one who'd started this all with his stoically frantic call to Preventer HQ.

"Where's Yui?"

**"He's resting,"** Quatre replied, stealing a glance towards Trowa, **"We had a . . . situation."** The pale blonde used Wufei's own words, therefore he could not be faulted. **"We've taken care of it. Why did you call us; you said it was urgent."**

"Duo was here." Wufei paused to let this information truly grab hold of the two before he continued, "He freed Dorothy Catalonia, who was being held on charges of theft."

**"Delilah Corinthians . . ."** Quatre murmured, then shook his head and motioned for the Preventer to continue.

"She stole a highly dangerous experimental drug, known as Aurora for lack of being able to pronounce it's scientific name. It was used in the study of newtypes, to put chosen "normal" individuals into a trance state so that they would be able to communicate with newtypes on that purely mental level and perhaps gain a better understand of how their minds and abilities work." Wufei sighed and leaned back, forming a triangle with his thumbs and forefingers, curling the rest into his palms. "Unfortunately, Aurora was a little too powerful. After only three uses, the subjects would fall into permanent comatose states. All of this happened ten years ago, and all of the twelve patients have yet to wake up."

Quatre and Trowa gazed at him with wide, horrified eyes. Finally the small blonde rose and paced before the vidphone, tiny brows creased in worried contemplation.

**"What were they thinking? Most newtypes still operate on the same level as normal people. There've only been a few in the history of the colonies who have ever achieved consciousness on a higher level."**

"We know that now," Wufei agreed, holding up a document of lesser years than the drug itself, "but that theory was only proven eight years ago, two years after these people idiotically tested their drug on unsuspecting guinea pigs." He tossed the paper aside with a sneer of disgust. Beneath it and the folders containing the Aurora information were photographs of the twelve victims of bio-extract X51173A. "What would Duo want with this drug?" The Chinese boy didn't realize that he mused aloud until Trowa's voice filtered through the vidphone.

**"What do you mean? Wasn't the theft just a distraction to keep our eyes off of him?"**

"No," Wufei replied with a derogatory snort. He couldn't believe Trowa could be so blind to the obvious. "First of all, if that were the case, bio-extract X51173A would have turned up somewhere else as soon as . . ." He stopped, blinked, finally hearing what Trowa had said. "Why would he want to keep our eyes off of him?" This time it was Trowa's turn to snort, and Wufei's eyes narrowed. Quatre answered.

**"That's what Hiiro tried to tell you. Duo is the one who killed Relena."**

Wufei leaned closer to the screen as if he could reach into it and drag the blonde through to throttle the truth from him. He knew his eyes were wide with disbelief, but could do nothing to plaster back his mask of untouchability. He kept his mouth firmly closed, afraid questions would tumble from it in chaotic heaps if his lips should open even a crack. At last he cleared his throat and settled back into his leather chair.

"Well then, that would b-be another explanation." Wufei cursed inwardly at the insecure shaking of his voice. "As I was saying, if the theft were only a ruse, then the drug would have been returned or abandoned in some obvious place. It has not, therefore we must conclude that Duo is still in possession of it. And now we must also assume that he killed Relena for a reason. Namely, because of her position within the government. Most likely she was the person in the best arrangement to be able to stop whatever it is Duo is planning." He saw Quatre visibly swallow. Trowa supplied the only conclusion.

**"He's not done yet."**

**"What do we do?" **Quatre bit his lip, blue eyes quavering uncertainly as he pondered this strange and undesirable turn of events. Wufei met Trowa's eyes and an agreement was instantly formed. The two nodded at each other. It was Wufei who spoke.

"We have to kill him.

* * *

Hiiro felt a strange constriction in his chest at Wufei's words. At first he thought he might be having a heart attack, until he remembered that anxiety and anger was sometimes accompanied by an odd feeling in the chest. So he must be feeling some uneasiness over the idea of killing a fellow Gundam pilot and close friend. Friend. The word was so strange in his mind, so foreign. Yet it described Duo perfectly. Happy, smiling, bouncing around on his own little cloud of exuberance, the Maxwell demon could make friends with Satan himself and still make it through the gates of Heaven.

At least, the old Duo could have.

Like the rest of his comrades, Hiiro wasn't quite certain what to make of this new and darker version of their familiar friend. He only knew that the thought of killing Duo . . . simply would not take hold in his mind. No. It couldn't be allowed.

But he couldn't let them know that he knew. The three didn't even know that he stood on the outside of the door, listening to them when Quatre had specifically told him to rest. The Arabian wasn't the only one who could ignore orders meant for his well-being. Hiiro's hands clenched into fists as he heard Quatre and Trowa wishing Wufei well and cutting their connection. He backed up a bit, then strode forward as if he hadn't been simply standing and turned into the straightened study. The two looked up at him, almost guiltily, as if they knew they had just agreed to something he would not appreciate. But he said nothing.

"Hiiro . . . shouldn't you be in bed?" Quatre stepped forward and the Prussian-eyed one shrugged. The blonde glanced back at Trowa, who looked as if he were on the verge of telling Hiiro everything that had just been said. Instead, Hiiro chose that moment to speak.

"Let's call Wufei now. He should know about Duo."

"Actually . . ." the small boy glared down at his shoes, as though they were the guilty perpetrators, "we've already spoken to him. He called while you were asleep."

Having never been asleep, Hiiro nonetheless feigned a close approximation to surprise. "And you didn't wake me?"

"We thought it best not to, after your—"

"Episode," Quatre supplied for his koi.

"I'm not you, Quatre," Hiiro struck out with particular vehemence, "I'm not a frail doll that has to be put away on a shelf if I'm not to break. I can handle this." Trowa moved forward, no doubt to choke the arrogance out of Hiiro's tone, but Quatre thrust out a small arm to stop him. The pale face had settled into a cold white marble slab of controlled anger.

"I'm sure you can handle this, Hiiro. That's why you tried to kill Trowa earlier, because you're so in control of yourself. Just because I feel things, doesn't mean I'm glass." The two stared at each other, neither one wanting to back down, and neither one weak enough to admit defeat. At last Quatre spoke again, his voice as hard as his face. "I have an idea on how to find Duo, whether he wants to be found or not."

"And what would that be?"

"I've heard that Milliardo keeps the ruins of Epyon somewhere below Sanch Palace. If the Zero System is salvageable, I can use it to expand my mind and find Duo's." Hiiro glanced over Quatre's shoulder to see the widening of Trowa's eyes and the surprise written on his features. Obviously his precious little one had neglected to inform his koi of this plan. "I'm going to ask him about it tomorrow, and explain only that it can help us find the killer." Of course none of them had told the prince yet about Duo's involvement.

"Quatre . . ."

"Stop, Trowa." The blonde didn't even look over his shoulder, but continued to glare straight at Hiiro. "I won't even allow you to coddle me anymore. I'm stronger than you think I am." He said this with the air of one who has discovered his own strength and must now impart this knowledge to the world. How could he know that Hiiro had always known this? Unfortunately, the Japanese boy had allowed his new anger to run away with him again and contradict his words before they were even said.

Quatre finally looked away, gave a short sigh, and walked out. Trowa followed closely after. Hiiro was left standing, as always, alone in a strange place and not knowing what to do next.

* * *

Mariemaia sat on the large bed, sinking a bit into the fluffy white and pink comforter. At her feet, on the floor, played a young girl of about six years of age. Mariemaia had to admit the child was cute beyond words with bouncy brown curls and big green eyes. Her pastel blue dress only enhanced her inherent cuteness, as did the tiny mouth that seemed to constantly pout. But as the girl sat there on the plush tan carpet, a doll cradled carefully in her pudgy arms, there was no happiness in her eyes or in the way she played. Only a childish resignation. She had nothing else to do in this prison, so she might as well play.

"What's your name?" Mariemaia finally asked when she could stand the silence no more.

"Sanyu."

"That's an interesting name." She paused, waiting. When Sanyu said nothing more, Mariemaia tried again. "Do you know what it means?"

"Uh huh." Sanyu cuddled the doll closer to her, sorrow cloaking her chubby face within its thin veil. "Happiness."

The red-haired child was about to reply to the irony of this name when the door was flung open by an overly cheerful Duo. Since he'd shown up at her home only two hours before and dumped her here in this room, Mariemaia had come to the conclusion that he was a very bad man. The hypodermic needle in his right hand did little to change that new opinion.

"Well my little chickadees, how are things going in your palace abode?" He didn't seem all that surprised when neither girl answered. Sanyu stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes while Mariemaia glared with something akin to hatred. "Carrot, time for your medicine."

"I don't have any medicine," she stated simply.

"You do now." He snapped his fingers in a showy gesture and Mariemaia couldn't move. She figured this was what had happened to Miss Une to keep the woman from saving her from this fate. "Be still and be good my little vegetable, and this won't hurt." Unable to squirm or protest, Duo's warning seemed to her to be a little unecessary.

The needle lifted from his hand and floated over to her bare arm, which rose without permission to greet the thin, winking weapon of childish torture. Mariemaia heard Sanyu give a small whimper. "Don't worry, Sanyu, it's just a shot. It won't hurt. I've gotten plenty." And surprisingly, she was right. The guideless needle slid without complaint into her waiting vein. Whatever it held burned a bit when pushed into her bloodstream, but other than that the process was painless.

Somehow, though, she didn't think this was medicine to keep her from getting sick.

* * *

The instant Hiiro walked into his room, he knew something was wrong.

Out of place. Things were not exactly as he had left them. The book on the table had been moved slightly. The empty glass by his bed now resided on the floor. A subtle shift in familiar things, in the way he'd left the order of his living chambers, alerted him to the danger. And the moment he knew there was danger, a tingle of urgency crawled over his skin and he knew there wasn't time to even search for the source. He turned and ran.

Halfway down the hall, the blast from his room sent him sprawling and sliding over the slick marble floor. He slammed into a side wall and lay there as panicked shouts floated upstairs from servants and others who'd heard the explosion. Hiiro's vision swam, pain throbbing from the back of his skull.

Someone wanted him dead. That he was used to. But that person had tried to kill him in Sanch. Relena's kingdom.

And that he wouldn't . . . couldn't forgive.

End Chapter Five.


	7. Chapter 6

**I got lazy about reposting these old chapters. Here you go. Sorry about that.**

**Disclaimer:** Aw, you know Gundam Wing don't belong to me.

**Wayward – Chapter Six**

Hiiro winced as Galer poked and prodded his head for probably the sixtieth time. A mortician and embalmer, Galer still remained the only licensed doctor in Sanch Palace. They'd sent for the nearest M.D. from the village, but until then Hiiro had to be patient and deal with Galer's poking fingers. The shaking in those digits made it all the worse.

"Gomen nasai," Galer began in Japanese, "I can be a bit clumsy. The dead don't notice, but the living do." Hiiro stared at the young Caucasian man, not paying any attention to his apology, only the language it was spoken in.

"You speak Japanese?"

"My wife was Japanese. She insisted that I learn." Instead of pleasure, Galer's face showed a mixture of deep love and deep sorrow. Hiiro didn't ask what had happened. "Since you and I are alone, I figured it would be okay for us to speak Japanese."

"The others can speak it too. Except Duo. He said he could never sit still long enough to learn." Hiiro surprised himself with this stoic report on the learning ability of his best friend, currently insane. Galer didn't even seem to notice as he stepped back and pulled off his latex gloves, tossing them into the nearest trash bin. The man stood there, staring into the green metal depths as if his entire reason for living lay within. At last he turned to look at Hiiro, a wobbling smile on his face.

"Are there any suspects?"

Hiiro blinked.

"Suspects?" He found himself wondering how the doctor had come to be uninformed that the Gundam pilots knew the identity of the killer, but were not releasing it.

"Yes, I assume that the Sanch authorities are trying to find out who bombed your living quarters. You are, after all, a guest of Prince Milliardo."

"Oh." Galer spoke of the bomb. He should have known. "I don't think so, but I've been in here since it happened. Quatre and Trowa have things under control." Even Hiiro heard the harsh accusation in his voice. He felt left out, caged here and within his own burgeoning emotions, while his comrades walked freely, doing the job that should have been his. "I'll put him in prison myself." Hiiro spat, causing Galer to look sharply up at him from the tray of autopsy tools that had grabbed his attention.

"Excuse me?"

"The bomber. This is Sanch, Relena's kingdom. It's supposed to be a place of peace and whoever this person is, they disrespected her memory and her ideals." Hiiro pushed himself down from the cold examination table despite the lasting pain in his head. "I can't forgive them for that." The boy swept past the doctor and out of the door, determined to find the perpetrator before he could get away.

He faintly heard Galer's half-hearted, "Good luck."

* * *

Milliardo blinked at the boys sitting before his desk. Damn those gossiping servants and their gossiping families! He should have known that nothing was secret or sacred in Sanch Palace so long as the Randolph family worked within the walls. He gave a sigh through his nose and leaned back, considering their request as he looked them over. They seemed to have no harmful intentions. Then again, it probably wasn't possible for Quatre Raberba Winner to have harmful intentions.

"With my already heightened abilities, the Zero technology would allow me to reach out with my mind and touch the mind of the person who has memories of killing Relena. Then I would be able to see through their eyes and find out where they are." Such earnest blue eyes, begging with their gentleness to be allowed to do this, to take the risk Milliardo knew this was to Quatre's already burnt system.

"What will happen to you?"

"I'll be exhausted, I might even lose consciousness," the boy replied with unwavering honesty, "There's even a chance for me to die. But I believe the risks are worth it. After all, Relena was a dear friend as well as a respected government leader."

Milliardo turned his appraising gaze from the pale boy to his taller, darker companion. Trowa sat in silence, as usual, but this was a more brooding silence than normal. Disapproval oozed tangibly from his rigid form and the prince looked away. What could he do when caught between disagreeing lovers? But the decision must be his. As much as he understood Trowa's worry, for he himself mused too much on the dangers Lucrezia put herself through, Milliardo found himself unable to refuse Quatre's request.

"If this can help us find the identity of my sister's murderer, I have to allow you to follow through with it. The rumors are true, as you've heard. I keep Epyon in the hangar where you and Lieutenant Noin once hid Taurus mobile suits from Relena." The prince curled over his desk, lacing his ten fingers through each other as he stared at the tabletop. Finally he lifted his eyes to the two. "The Zero system is salvageable. I made sure of that myself when I first brought the suit here." He stood, making a solemn pillar behind the desk before he moved around it and towards the door. "The repairs should take only a couple of days, at most."

"Thank you, Your Highness, for this opportunity." Quatre stood and made a formal bow, as did Trowa, though with a less satisfied expression on his half-hidden face.

"Don't thank me." And Milliardo meant it. The Zero system never caused anything but trouble, and in a situation such as the one they faced, they could deal with no more trouble.

* * *

The day after Milliardo gave his agreement for the use of Epyon's Zero system, Wufei arrived from Preventer Headquarters on urgent business from Head Preventer Une. With a stony face he told them all of the kidnapping of Mariemaia and how a panicked Lady Une had ordered all Preventers not currently working on a case to spread out over Earth and the colonies. All were to be searching for Duo Maxwell and his hiding place. Wufei, as a respected and trusted member of the Preventers, was allowed to chose his own assignment. He chose Earth and immediately reported to Sanch in order to tell them of these events. Quatre felt the first tinglings of foreboding. Trowa didn't know who to be more worried about, Quatre or the little girl in Duo's possession. Hiiro did not offer his feelings, but his new emotions were written over his face, which was unused to hiding such things. He was uncomfortable with the entire idea of striking back against Duo, but knew it was his duty.

So Wufei and Hiiro contributed to the rebuilding of the half-demolished suit's Zero system, one with growing anger and the other with growing uncertainty. As promised, the repairs took less than two days, but Trowa convinced his koi to wait and rest for another twenty-four hours. All of them sat on edge, hoping that Duo wrecked no more havoc while they waited.

* * *

The phone rang. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, trying to ignore the sound and the fickle promises it offered. Always the voice said the same thing . . . if he complied with orders, he would be rewarded with the return of his possession. Never was that agreement met, but he couldn't pass up another opportunity to maybe, finally, get what he wanted.

"Yes?"

"I need another favor. You know what will happen if you don't agree."

"Yes."

"Then listen, my friend. And don't worry, I'm taking good care of your little one."

* * *

Quatre flipped on the power source for Epyon, which had also been repaired in order to feed the Zero system. But there need be no worry about Quatre getting out of control in the suit, for all that remained was the cockpit and a small portion of the head. The remaining green eye flared to life as a hum filled the once dead machine.

"I'll be ready to initiate Zero in sixty seconds," the Arabian warned his friends, who waited below. This fragment of Epyon hung from steel wires from the hangar's ceiling. They all stood a bit back from it, a natural fear of the bulk falling keeping them from wandering too close. Quatre could just see Trowa, gazing up with that same worried expression that had marred his face for the past three days. The blonde sighed and looked up to the countdown clock. "Ten . . . nine . . ." He surprised himself with a wave of pure anxiety from his stomach. " . . . eight . . . seven . . ." The flashing red numbers glowed with hellish intensity above him. He couldn't help but think that they offered some premonition of time running short, not just for this purpose, but for them all. " . . . five . . . four . . ." His hand hovered just over the keypad, ready to type in the four meaningful letters. " . . . three . . . two . . ." _You can forget this now, turn back—_ " . . .one!" His fingers danced, so taut with pent up energy that they moved before he could consciously give them permission. In the next moment, which ran fluidly from the one preceding, the golden yellow glow of the Zero filled his eyes and mind. He vaguely heard the murmurings of those below him, but they no longer concerned him. All the minds or the world lay before him for exploring, but he only search for one.

_Where are you? You're here somewhere, Duo. I know it. I can feel your mind. It's much more intense than before . . . what happened to you?_

_**I became a god,**_ the reply boomed into his head, _**what's your excuse, Quatre?**_

He nearly reeled out from his perch in the cockpit. Duo's mindvoice battered at his already tired psyche with its volume. _Duo . . . why did you take Mariemaia? Why have you done any of this? _He sent out the distracting questions, all the while seeking the knowledge of where Duo was and where he kept the child.

_**What reason do I need? It was fun. **_A chuckle wafted over the distances between minds, a dark sound rife with the cruelty Quatre still hadn't fully come to accept. _**Oh, naughty Quatre is trying to find what's none of his business. **_

Panic flooded through the small boy, both from being found out so easily and from fear of what the braided one might do. He couldn't die; he couldn't leave Trowa behind. Not after he'd promised his koi that he would emerge from this alive.

_**You promised, did you? Well, we can't have you breaking a promise now can we? But I'd get out of there as quickly as possible if I were you . . . the numbers are stacked against you.**_

It took Quatre a moment to understand, but then his blue eyes landed on the digital counter. The numbers were counting down again, and they were just flicking from eight to seven. He cursed under his breath in his mother tongue, ripped the Zero system helmet from his head, and rushed out onto the open cockpit door. "RUN!" was all he managed to get out before leaping spread eagle from the door. He sailed through the air for a second, unsure if he could even survive such a fall. Then there was a deafening blare of sound behind him, followed by a flash of yellow light.

* * *

"He'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. He's exhausted, but from what I hear he's used to that. He's got a mild concussion and a few cuts and bruises, but other than that he's the perfect picture of youthful health."

The voices flittered over his barely conscious form, one familiar, one unknown. As he listened other sounds because apparent: the shuffling of feet, clinking of metal against metal, and the gentle hum of some electronic equipment in the background. Then there came a sigh and a gentle hand rested on his unmoving arm. Quatre decided to open his eyes.

The most immediate face in his vision was Trowa's.

"Quatre, are you alright? How do you feel?" The banged boy's bare concern shone through his face and Quatre couldn't help but smile.

"You heard the doctor, I'll be fine. At least, I assume that was the doctor."

Trowa nodded. "He arrived from Sanch not long after Epyon exploded." A dark shadow discolored his face for a moment. "Three days after we called him to look after Hiiro's injuries."

"Don't be so hard on him," Quatre said, lifting himself into a slow sitting position, "he probably had other, more serious cases to take care of. After all, Hiiro was barely even hurt."

"Out of luck." Trowa reached out to steady his koi.

"No, out of training. Nothing with us is luck, you should know that." Quatre pushed away the tall one's seeking hands, determined to stand and walk on his own.

"It wasn't luck that you got out of Epyon just in time?"

"No." The blonde frowned, deep and dark. "I got out because Duo let me out. He's insane, Trowa. Evil." Quatre shook his head, remembering the conversation in the depths of the Zero system. Religion preached of evil on Earth and evil in the heart of man, but never had the Arabian seen it in such a pure form. Looking up, he could see in Trowa's eyes that the boy retained some natural skepticism of the word "evil." One green eye trained carefully on the smaller boy, Trowa gave a thoughtful breath, considering this information and the consequences.

"Are you saying that he's some sort of devil?"

"I don't think so. He called himself a god." Quatre bit his lower lip softly as they exited the medical area. Trowa began to lead them towards their shared room, but his companion shied away, heading in the opposite direction. "I need some time to think, alone. I'll be in the study if anyone needs me." For a moment he thought that his overprotective lover would insist on following him, however Trowa finally gave a nod and turned away, leaving Quatre to his darkening thoughts.

* * *

Wufei sifted through the grey, smoldering remains of Epyon. Two hours after the explosion, the Gundanium remained too hot to touch with bare hands, so he wore thick gloves to protect his fragile human flesh. Whatever bomb created this mess had been powerful enough not only to incinerate any trace of itself, but nearly obliterate solid walls of Gundanium alloy. This bomber, whoever he or she may be, had expert knowledge and access to the best equipment. The Chinese boy scowled, tossing down a small piece of what had once been part of Epyon's control system. He didn't need this; he already had enough to deal with. A renegade bomber only complicated his already convoluted job.

"Wufei."

The irate Preventer looked up from his scavenging to see Trowa in the doorway, arms crossed, face a mass of stone. Wufei was about to ask on Quatre's condition when the tall one stepped aside and revealed the smirking visage of Sally Po.

"Look what I found," Trowa said in a completely humorless voice. "She was wandering around the corridors, looking for you." An emerald eye shifted from Chinese boy to grinning woman. At last, with lifted eyebrow, Trowa stepped back through the door. "I think I'll go . . . find Hiiro." Then there was empty air where Trowa had been.

Sally strolled forward, not even bothering to look down at the blackened debris littering her path. Wufei stood, legs groaning from having been in a crouch for so long. Immediately his dark eyes were drawn to the slow, intentional sway of her hips, clad tightly in her Preventer uniform. He gulped as the memory of their one night together rose to the surface of his mind. Without warning, he desired another such tryst. Soon.

"Sally . . . w-what are you doing here?" Why did his walls and masks always break down around her?

"I thought I'd drop in, check up on you. Send a report back to HQ." She kicked past a final smoking obstacle and stood before him, one hand rising to his face, pressing her fingers lightly to his lips. "I missed you."

Wufei's eyelids fell halfway in response to the pleasure of her touch. Automatically he stepped forward, arms sliding around her waist. He murmured something about missing her as well as her hand trailed down his chin and over the vulnerable skin of his throat. A sigh bordering on a moan drifted up through his lips as she leaned forward, warm breath caressing his cheek.

"I missed you, Wufei." Her mouth closed around his, capturing him in the delight of her feel and making him forget completely where he was. Her tongue sought forceful entrance into his mouth with a ferocity she had never displayed before. It sent a burning line of desire up his spine at the same time he began to shoulder a doubt. Sally's fingers closed like iron around his arms, giving the Chinese boy an uncomfortable sense of no longer being in control. He lifted his hand and yanked at her wrists, pulling away. Sally looked on at him, neither perturbed nor angry, only patiently waiting for what he would do or say next. With a growl Wufei flung her hands away from him and put a good three feet of distance between himself and this person.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Sally," she replied, but a with slow, malicious grin spreading over her features. And who else would she be? That body, its shape and curves, was all Sally. Desire for that body still inflamed him, though he knew that this was not Sally. Not even that face, so much like her handsome one even with the cruel smirk, could belong to the real Sally Po.

"No you're not."

With a speed not of natural human possession, she reached forward and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him with one arm up to peer into her eyes. "If I'm not Sally, then who am I?" Gripped with a pure terror he'd never known before, even in the center of battle, Wufei searched those eyes for any hint of the Sally he knew. Instead all he found was a deep, swirling crimson. A cruelty and malignancy he'd seen only once before.

"Duo . . ."

"Oh, you're good," said Sally in Duo's voice. For only a moment the slender fingers of her free hand clutched tightly at his throat. "Catch me if you can." Then the crimson malevolence swirled and left her gaze, leaving behind a confused woman. "W-Wufei?" Sally, the real Sally, jerked her hands away from him as thought he burned. Terror shone through the usual strength of her demeanor as she backed away from him, flitting glances at her surroundings. She had no clue how she arrived here.

Wufei lunged forward and caught her as she fell in a faint. Sally Po did not faint, so he knew she had to have simply been overloaded. Her brain shut down when no longer capable of handling what it was given. In any other woman he may have seen this retreat as feeble. However, Sally had shown her strength to him many times in many different ways. This situation, he understood, went far beyond anything anyone could deal with without some sort of mental downtime. Tenderly, Wufei brushed a stray strand of hair from her face, then lifted her smoothly into his arms.

_Catch me if you can._

Kicking debris from his path, Wufei carried the rag-doll form of his lover from the hangar. His dark eyes flickered from wall to corner, from one end of the corridor to the other. Paranoia seized him as Duo's words played over in his mind.

_Catch me if you can. _

The damn braided demon had something in mind, some twisted plan. Wufei scowled, turning towards Trowa and Quatre's shared room, hoping to fine at least one of them. Hoping he would find them alone in their bodies.

_Catch me if you can._

"Where the hell are they?" he murmured to himself moments later when, on arrival at their doorway, he found only a scattering of things that bared resemblance to their owners, but no trace of the two themselves. He propped Sally up against the door jam to relieve the stress on his arms while he thought. Gazing on her placid face, he knew it would not be so serene once she awoke. She would be angry, he knew, for he was angry for her. What Duo had done was the mental form of rape, a complete violation of the woman Wufei loved, and the Chinese boy would not stand for it to go unpunished.

"What's going on?"

Trowa approached from the opposite direction, a brow arched, and Wufei sighed in relief to see not trace of malignancy in his haze. Then he realized the picture he must present: scowling in another's doorway, holding up an unconscious woman. No time, however, to be embarrassed.

"Duo paid a little visit." He scooped Sally up once more. "We've got to find Hiiro and Quatre. Duo's not done yet. He told me 'catch me if you can'." The iris of Trowa's visible eye darkened in what Wufei could only assume was worry for his little blonde koi.

"Quatre said he would be in the study," he paused to look at his watch, "about twenty minutes ago."

"Hiiro's new room is on the way there; let's go."

Trowa nodded curtly and marched off in the direction of the study. Wufei followed close, adjusting his grip on Sally's form, which became heavier with each passing second. _Damn onna. _He considered re-thinking his evaluation of her faint, if only because it fell to him to carry her.

Hiiro met them at the door, eyes devoid of evil but abundant in anxiety. He gave no signs of surprise when Wufei explained what had occurred, and agreed that they should proceed forthwith to the study. About that time Sally groaned and opened her eyes, and Wufei was only too glad to let her stand for herself. As confused as she had to be, the woman stifled her questions and remained silent as they chose their destination.

The corridor winding its way to the study seemed to pulsate with dark intentions. All around their slow moving forms Wufei felt a baneful presence watching, appraising, laughing. Up ahead Hiiro carried his gun out in the open, face set, prepared to fire at anything that moved too quickly. Grudgingly Wufei admitted to himself, even if he did not express it aloud to Yui, that a gun was not likely to be able to stop something Duo sent after them. It would be a minor annoyance at best.

Trowa trudged ahead with a straight back and eyes that never wavered from the forward position. But his face had paled by several shades, and a light film of nervous sweat coated the boy's skin. What must he be thinking, knowing that this darkness radiated from the place where Quatre waited?

"Come in," said Quatre's voice as they approached. One by one they filed into the room, and Trowa gave a sharp, fearful cry.

Quatre calmly, primly sat in a large leather chair, his hands folded neatly in his lap. Beneath those pale hands lay a dull grey pistol.

"Hello!" His face flashed them a cheerful smile that did not even begin to reach his eyes. No, the aqua pools that stared out from that pale, buoyant face were holes of utter terror. Duo had control, but unlike Sally, Quatre was aware. "Quatre and I were just having a little conversation about the nature of good and evil. He says that light must always conquer darkness if the world is to continue. I hold to the idea that there can be no light without darkness. What do you guys think?"

Wufei blinked and stared at the sight. Quatre's delicate face glared back, hardening almost imperceptibly with the presence of the darkness within him. But the eyes . . . lost within those twin aqua orbs, the Chinese boy began to shudder and could say nothing. Hiiro and Trowa remained silent as well, mouths presumably drawn closed by their own versions of this same horror. Quatre's mouth curled upwards in a grin grossly too exaggerated for his delicacy.

"No opinions? I had hoped to get a good debate going here." Thin fingers drummed recklessly over the hard metal surface of the pistol and Quatre's head tilted slightly, almost succeeding in making him look curiously innocent. "What, not even you, Wufei?"

"Get out." Stepping forward, Trowa choked out those two words with more emotion than Wufei had ever heard the acrobat profess. "Get out of him, now." Before he could take another step, Quatre's marionette hand lifted the pistol to his vulnerable temple, grin sending his threat as well as any words. Trowa could only stand impotently, shaking with fear and rage.

"Now, now, I wanted us all to play nice." Immediately the cheerful grin dropped, leaving the lips in a tight line of anger. "Guess that's out of the question. Speaking of questions, I know what yours are. Why am I doing this? What do I want? How did I do this or that? What's happened to me?" Quatre's lungs heaved a terrific sigh, and his wide eyes rolled in his head, a gruesome expression of exasperation. "I'm tired of hearing those questions over and over again from your minds, and I don't feel like answering any of them." The finger pressed lightly on the trigger, teasing them cruelly. "Maybe I should just kill him. What do you think?"

Wufei and Hiiro both grabbed one of Trowa's arms to hold him back. They remained objective and knew that they couldn't dare to anger Duo.

"Why?" The trembling tall one spoke through gritted teeth. "Why Quatre?"

"Because . . ." the hateful presence grinned again suddenly, and Wufei felt a sharp tingle of foreboding, "He's too kind."

The gun fired.

"QUATRE!"

Wufei allowed Trowa to lurch forward, paralyzed by his own shock and outrage. He could look no where but the growing mass of blood and grey matter spilling from a gaping, pulsing wound in Quatre's head. The Arabian's small body slumped over itself, eyes hidden by a down- turned face. But he knew they would no longer be filled with terror, but empty slates. The Chinese boy vaguely saw Trowa fall to his knees at the base of Quatre's chair, and saw him move to lift Quatre's head.

A pale hand caught Trowa's, bent it back and snapped the wrist.

Wufei staggered against the doorframe as Quatre's bleeding head rose, blank eyes nevertheless holding endless ill will. That grin, so cold, so inhuman, split across the dead face as Duo's voice drifted from Quatre's lips.

"Should I stay? I can animate this body as long as I need or want."

Behind him, Sally groaned and Wufei could hear her feet as she stumbled away from this grisly scene. Before him, Trowa released a great scream of pain and fury, his free and uncrushed hand flying to his enemy's throat. Wufei wanted to close his eyes against it: the dead body laughing, the tall boy trying to strangle that cackling demon from his lover's still warm corpse.

"GET OUT! GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT!!!"

"Trowa . . ." Hiiro took a tremulous step forward. Wufei paused to release his breath and realized that there was no more laughing. Trowa held fast to the throat of a soulless husk, no longer even inhabited by the twisted version of Duo. He shook the cadaver without mercy, mouth pulled into an ugly grimace. "Trowa, stop . . ."

"Oh, for the love of God, Trowa, please stop!" Sally moaned from the hallway. Wufei couldn't see her, for he gripped the door frame tightly and couldn't trust his legs to hold him should he let go.

At last some inkling of awareness crept into Trowa's eyes. With an agonized wail so unlike him, the boy tore his fingers from about Quatre's throat and pushed himself violently away. The unkind jolt sent the blonde's body tumbling from the chair over the carpeted floor. Blood splattered over his white face and Trowa, who sat shuddering on the ground, whimpering like a child witnessing the passing of their first lost loved one.

All around them the walls still trembled with dark glee, and they seemed to titter triumphantly.

End Chapter Six.


	8. Chapter 7

**I got lazy about reposting these old chapters. Here you go. Sorry about that.**

**Disclaimer:** Aw, you know Gundam Wing don't belong to me.

**Wayward – Chapter Seven**

Beneath sickly blue lights that washed away all remnants of health, Trowa sat in silent and melancholic contemplation. His uninjured hand clasped the bandaged one, both limply resting between his legs, his feet planted flat on the tile floor. Without the lights to flush the color from his face, Trowa would still have been pale, save for the dark smudges of lost sleep about his eyes. The acrobat's posture sang of his distress; the boy slumped with curved back, head hanging, all spirit chased from his form. This perfect picture of bewildered misery decorated the morgue.

Doctor Albert Galer stood just outside the metal double doors. He wasn't sure if he should push them open and insist that the boy vacate his morgue, or allow Trowa a bit more time to say goodbye.

He swallowed hard, turning away. Such a sight couldn't be dwelled upon for too long; one began to remember their own losses. And Albert had suffered losses. He lowered his head, squeezing the bridge of his nose tightly, forcing away a burgeoning stress headache. Dark confusion and rage bubbled up from his gut, threatening to spill blackness out through his mouth, nose, eyes and ears and devour him from the outside as well as in. The suppression of this fury caused his entire body to tremble. At last, unable to only stand and shake anymore, he took out his anger on the nearest wall by punching it mightily. He succeeded only in hurting his hand and making absolutely no dent in the wall whatsoever.

Sucking on the hand that throbbed, Albert looked up when the morgue doors slammed suddenly open. Trowa marched past him. He shuddered upon seeing the utter hatred shining behind the green steel orbs settled into Trowa's stone face.

"Trowa," he reached out to stop the boy. More swiftly than his life had crumbled around him, Trowa's hand reached out and grabbed Albert's collar, the strong arm pushing him back against the wall. Not one green eye even flickered his way as the tall one spoke.

"Don't. Touch. Me." They remained that way a moment longer, prisoner and stoic warden. Then, at last, Trowa's fingers relaxed and released Albert's shirt. As the boy passed completely by, Albert opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

_What are you going to tell him? What CAN you tell him? Nothing, that's what. If you know what's good for you, that is. _

* * *

How long had it been? How long since he'd run that nosy doctor into the wall? Two hours? Three? Surely no longer than that. A person just couldn't lose that much time.

Trowa spun the bullet chamber again. Spin. Click, click, click. Since letting Galer know exactly where he stood, Trowa had been sitting alone in the locked study. He sat cross-legged in the same large, leather chair that Quatre spent his last moments in, holding the same revolver, staring down at the blood-caked carpet. He'd been sure to let all the staff know that the servant who cleaned the study floor would be the servant to die.

Spin. Click, click, click.

He didn't really even see the gun. He stared straight past it. The bloodied floor really interested him. Quatre's blood. Quatre's life essence, part of what had made him so uniquely, exquisitely, beautifully Quatre. Gone. Spilled over this meshing of polyester and who knew what else that was quite frankly rather ugly. Surely Relena had possessed more sense than to choose such hideous carpeting, so he had to blame the decorating faux pas on some Peacecraft before her.

Spin. Click, click, click.

After this turn of the wheel of fate, Trowa untangled his long legs from each other and set them on the floor, emulating perfectly the prim and proper manner in which Quatre had been sitting. Settling the pistol beneath his folded hands, Trowa let his gaze slip once more over the floor and to the sticky puddle of red. It wasn't really a puddle anymore, because the blood seeped deep into the fibers, making itself a permanent fixture in the room. No matter how washed it was, how clean the carpet looked, it would always hold some remnants of Quatre and therefore memory of his death. Leave it there another day and no servant would ever be able to clean it. They would probably have to shut away this study and create a new one.

"Barton?" Knock, knock. "Barton, we know you're in there, dammit, so you might as well acknowledge our presence and let us in!"

Trowa stared at the floor.

"Barton!" The sound of Wufei grumbling behind the door and the shuffling of feet.

Trowa lifted the pistol to his temple.

Hiiro and Wufei slammed into the door, breaking the hinges and falling over each other through the entrance. Their tall friend waited motionless as they sputtered and cursed, pushing each other away in attempts to untangle their arms and legs. Wufei was first to stand, brush himself off, and look up. But Hiiro was the first to speak.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I have no intention of killing myself, if that's what you're thinking, Hiiro."

"That's not what it looks like." Hiiro finally managed to push himself to his feet behind Wufei. His deep voice held a sharp warning in its monotone as Hiiro slipped back into the habit of being stoically disapproving. Trowa realized that while his potent feelings were more prominent, the Perfect Soldier would still be able to handle himself. The hiding of emotions came far more easily to him than the expressing of them, and old habits were hard to break.

"This is how Quatre felt." Trowa replied, his gun hand beginning to shake ever so slightly. "Only multiply it by ten. I'm doing this of my own volition. I don't know if I pull the trigger now whether I'm dead or lucky. Quatre knew there were no empty chambers. He knew that if his finger squeezed he was dead. He couldn't do anything about it." He felt his body tremble with a suppressed sob. "Duo came when Quatre was at his weakest. When the demon knew that he couldn't fight back." Feeling the rage, the fury, the loss, and desolation, Trowa pulled the barrel away from his head and aimed squarely at Hiiro. "I'm going to kill Duo. And I'll kill anyone who tries to stop me."

Anger. Pain. Confusion. These flashed behind Hiiro's Prussian eyes. The confusion Trowa recognized immediately, knew it as the same bewilderment he had once felt. This, and the knowledge that this was where the anger and pain came from, almost made Trowa falter. Almost. With a breath and a swallow, the acrobat stood and walked to Hiiro, pressing the gun barrel deep into the boy's chest. They stared at each other, a showdown between two stoic people, only neither of them could truly be detached anymore. For different reasons, of course, but Trowa realized in that moment how alike they truly were and found enough pity to lower his weapon. Hiiro never blinked. Out of the corner of his eye Trowa could see Wufei glancing nervously between the two of them. What would they do? his expression clearly wondered. What on the Earthsphere would these two insane people do? And how many people were going to get hurt as a result?

With no word, and with no seeming caution concerning the gun, Hiiro turned at walked out. Trowa turned his gaze to Wufei.

"Will you help me?"

The Chinese boy hesitated, but only for a moment.

"Yes. I'll help."

* * *

He stared hard at himself in the mirror. Very hard. The face began to blur and fade, eyes turning into dark holes and mouth into a line of color only slightly darker than the rest of the peach plane that was his face. A mass of brown color sat atop the blob of his head. Odd thoughts passed through his mind. Could this illusion of tired and unfocused oculars be more than just that? Could it be a true Seeing, a symbolic manifestation of what his life had really become? A shapeless and meaningless hunk of . . . nothing?

Cold came crushing down over his body. No, more like crashing _through._ He'd gotten used to this sensation over the past months, at least enough to where he no longer collapsed every time it occurred. It happened much too often for him to allow it to incapacitate him.

The voice filled his head, different from all the ones before it and still the same. Each voice was an individual, a life once put to good use now wasted. And with it came the pictures, the mental images of that person's life and times, their joys, sorrows, pains, and finally their death. He closed his eyes against the form in the mirror, trying to close them against this new psychic barrage, though he knew it to be a useless endeavor.

_Why?_

He flinched. Something entirely different about this particular voice . . .

_Why?_

He rose, turning completely away from the fickle glass, as though it had some responsibility in the sudden forceful nature of some dead soul.

_Why? Why did you do this to me? How could you? _

He gripped the bed post tightly, leaning against it form help. The voice pounded at him, demanding to know why he'd done what he had when he wasn't even sure who this voice belonged to, let alone what atrocity he'd supposedly committed.

_**Who are you? **_He demanded of the forceful soul.

_WHY?!? WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME HOW COULD YOU, DUO?!? I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS!!_

Duo gave a short cry, mouth and eyes opened wide. His knees, the knees of an immortal god, buckled beneath him and he went crashing into the carpeted floor. He could feel his limbs shaking in wild convulsions. A seizure . . . by the gods, he was having a seizure. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard two voices. One belonged to the soul, that so familiar soul, that soul more powerful than he had thought, that had initiated his distress. The other was the indistinct scream of Dorothy Catalonia, who no doubt thought he was dying like the overly excited woman she was.

"Duo? Duo, oh God! God, please don't die!"

Scowling as he jerked, Duo nevertheless managed to congratulate himself on being able to read his poor lover so well. In the short time she'd been is servant, she'd degenerated quickly into less than a shadow of her former self, and he was immensely proud of himself.

"Oh God . . . Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name—"

She stopped when his trembling hand caught hers within its breaking grip. He managed to control his strength in order to keep from actually breaking her hand.

"Y-You know the rule," he stuttered out, allowing his fury at both being taken by surprise and in being so easily attacked flare through his eyes, "No p-praying to any god but me." Speaking to her, holding her pale hand in his, gave him something to concentrate on. Duo pushed himself up from the floor, willing his body to cease trembling. Glaring into her dark eyes, focusing on them, Duo growled inwardly.

_**You're a god. You can't let a fucking dead soul bring you down!**_

_DUO!_

_**"SHUT UP QUATRE!"**_ So desperate to rid himself of Quatre's presence, powerful even in death, Duo forgot to control the volume of his voice. It boomed through his home, shaking the walls and chipping paint away, flakes falling from the ceiling in a false flurry of snow. Dorothy screamed again, this time in pain as blood began to trickle in slender rivers from her ears.

Quatre fell silent. The cold passed. Duo closed his mouth and ended the barrage.

He found himself cradling a whimpering Dorothy. He blinked, unsure as to how exactly he'd come to be there, with this woman. And why was she bleeding? He lifted her head gently, looking into the eyes that stared up at him. They were filled with pain and fear, and somewhere deep down burned a fiery anger. He wiped at a trail of blood from one of her ears and heard himself speak, so softly, so tenderly he only confused himself more.

"Why are you bleeding?" Duo didn't know why she was here, or why he held her so closely, or even why he suddenly felt a terrible, sickening revulsion of himself.

"D-Duo?" Dorothy blinked, the fear and anger fading to be replaced with pure adoration. He held her as she stood on wobbling legs, and his own felt weak beneath him. His mind swirled, confusing and conflicting images beating against his brain as he walked Dorothy to the bed, making sure she was steadied as she sat. His own jelly legs forced him to sit beside her, and he cupped his head in his hands, trying to make sense of things.

"What's happening? Dorothy, why am I here? What . . . what have I been doing?" Moments passed. She didn't answer. He didn't look up but could feel her eyes on his back. Then, ever so softly, he felt her hand tentatively touch the back of his head, stroke his hair.

"You don't know?" Her voice wavered, as though she expected him to laugh at her and say that he joked with her, "You really don't know?"

"I – I don't . . . Quatre . . . Quatre's dead. He . . . did something to me. My mind's all messed up."

"Oh, Duo . . ." The soft feel of her cheek against his alerted him to the fact of how close they really were. And she seemed to have no inhibitions about being so close or touching him so familiarly. Her hand stroked the length of his braid, a thing more intimate to him then other parts of his body. Her other hand rested now at his neck, not in such a way for him to feel physically threatened, but imperiled in another manner.

"Dorothy—"

"Shhh," she placed a finger over his lips. "Don't ruin this for me. I've waited for so long to see that kindness in your eyes again. Please, please Duo, just be yourself for me just this once."

He didn't understand her, of course. For all the Earthsphere he wished he could. But Dorothy's hands sought out new places to invade, more private places, and he became aware that some time in the recent past this had been a habit to her, for her fingers knew all the right areas to caress. Involuntary shudders ran the length of his young body. Again protests rose to his mind but through the screen of flaring passion they just didn't seem important. Duo lifted his hands to either side of her head, grasping her gently and pulling her to him. He barely knew this woman, yet this kiss felt familiar, even warm. No . . . his hands were warm.

"Duo . . ." she murmured his name, pulling away slightly, and he dropped his hands "Thank you." He knew, without knowing how, that she thanked him for the healing, something that had been automatic beneath his hands, a power he hadn't been controlling. _**What's happening?!?**_Even his thoughts sounded different to him, different in a way he couldn't express but that chilled him nonetheless. Dorothy must have seen his fear in his eyes, for she smiled and kissed him again briefly.

"Don't be afraid!" she uttered the words in a reverent whisper, as if she stood in awestruck devotion on the judgement day. "Don't be afraid, Duo! Your powers are a wonderful gift! You're a god, immortal and perfect!" Once more he saw that bare adoration in her gaze, and her small speech did not alleviate his fears, but bolstered them.

"What have I done to you, Dorothy?" he asked, voice cracking. He raised a hand again, placing it at her cheek, almost revolted at the way she tilted her face into the caress. "What have I done to you; this isn't you!"

"I'm your servant."

Duo moved to get up. He couldn't, _wouldn't_ believe that he was such a . . . a _thing_ as what she described. Choked sobs stuck in his throat as she leaned onto him, effectively pinning him down not only with her body, but also with her eyes. They shone with terror and tears, pleading with him not to get up, not to leave her. He put his hands on either of her sides, meaning to lift her up and off, but the instant he touched her, Dorothy gave a cry and a shudder. She thought he meant to pull her towards him, for she settled herself straddling his hips and murmured words of thanks behind fervent kisses. She found the buttons of his shirt more quickly than his own could have and in moments the shirt lay open, revealing his chest, heaving from confusion and a sudden, growing desire. Duo felt the slow trail of her hands again, and this time had not the strength or conviction to stop them, his soul so weakened by his discoveries. Her slender fingers brushed so lightly over his quivering stomach, touching only enough to be considered touching. A moan escaped his lips before he could stop it, before he had a chance.

Gritting his teeth together, Duo grasped at her wrists and tossed her from atop him, over to his right. Without thinking he shifted himself into a position mirroring hers of only a moment ago. Her skirts fluttered down over the bed, revealing her pale legs.

"Dorothy, we can't—I can't do this to you, not after what—"

Her legs bent on either side of him, their smooth skin brushing lightly past the exposed flesh of his sides. He felt the tingles race down his spine, feeding the burning inside. He tried to speak again, but all he could feel was her legs at his sides and, in his mind, her warmth beneath him. Then he felt her lift her hips ever so slightly, pressing close him and in the next moment he found himself grasping her to himself in tight arms. His lips claimed hers as his own, his tongue pushing through with a force that shocked and disturbed him . . . but what disturbed him more was the thought that this was the beginning because if he gave in now then he wouldn't be able to keep his new confusion . . . if he gave in then he would return to this monstrous god-thing that Dorothy described but oh God it felt so good to hold her this close and why, why did it feel so good when he barely knew her and why did he rip through her layers of clothing when before he'd always been a slow lover and why did the smell of her excite him all the more and . . .

. . . and what was this . . .

. . . what was this . . .

. . . this chill . . .

. . . chill passing . . .

Duo blinked and his mind cleared for moment. Only a moment, one in which he found not only Dorothy completely shed of clothing but himself as well. They both were upright, him sitting, her kneeling, hovering above him, her arms draped over each of his shoulders and in that moment of clarity she dropped herself down and down until he felt her walls pushing against him, pushing and sliding over and closing around him and why in the name of God and all gods did this time, with this woman, feel so damn good? His hands grasped her hips roughly as he felt a growl rising from the pit beneath his throat. Dorothy gave a moan that had no substance, an airy thing with no strength. With that he felt all the more powerful and . . .

. . . the chill . . .

. . . returned . . .

. . . passing through . . .

. . . his chest, ice, just ice . . .

. . . voices, so many voices, all screaming and crying . . .

. . . cold . . .

. . . so . . .

. . . cold . . .

Duo grunted and shuddered, jerking with a strange seizure of pleasure and pain, chill and burning heat. Below him- somehow they'd changed positions again- Dorothy strained against his body, her skin covered in a glistening sheen of sweat yet she too shivered, goosebumps broken over her flesh. Her fingers closed ungently over his shoulders, sharp nails gouging out lines of deep red blood. Then she began to blur in his vision and as the cold ebbed away blackness crept in.

* * *

"Where's Hiiro?" Trowa cast a green glance about the room, deep scowl darkening his angry features further. Wufei shook his head, finding himself for once in his life with his hands raised in the universal gesture of ignorance. The Chinese boy sighed, wondering why on the Earthsphere Trowa insisted that this meeting be in the study. _He's masochistic, that's why._ "We don't have time to wait for him." The tall boy turned, staring Wufei straight in his dark eyes, something Trowa never did. Wufei swallowed, stepping backwards without really knowing why except that there was a dark rage so closely parallel to Duo's insanity that it made the banged one seem as demonic as his braided enemy. "I want him on our side, Wufei. We can't afford for him to go running to Duo."

Running to Duo? Wufei stared at Trowa. What the hell went through this boy's head? "Why would Hiiro go running to Duo? You can't possibly believe that Hiiro is working for him, can you?" The dark one watched as his taller companion sighed and shook his head, looking away, off into the same distant place he'd been hovering near since Quatre's death. Trowa traveled a thin road between reality and what Wufei knew was a tempting haze of incoherence.

"Hiiro's not working for Duo," Trowa answered suddenly, still staring into his private fantasy. "It's hard to explain, Wufei. I know what he's going through, because I've been there. The confusion. It's hard. He's going to betray us, not because he condones what Duo does or because he's Duo's lackey . . . but because he can't stand the thought of killing Duo, no matter how demonic he's become." Silence, both without and within Wufei's mind. What Trowa said simply didn't make it in; it was too unbelievable. "If you don't believe me, check his room. He's gone, I know he is. He's gone to warn Duo that we're going to move against him. As if Duo doesn't already know."

Wufei gripped Trowa by the collar, felt the scowl stretching his lips. "Hiiro is part of our team, Trowa. Whatever this confusion is you're talking about, it's not enough to make him go warn a killer that we're coming for him. Hiiro's a Gundam pilot; he wouldn't do that."

Trowa looked down at him, so calm, serenity in his green eyes, and Wufei knew that Trowa had come to a decision and was settled into it. Jung would call it self-actualization . . . "In case you've forgotten, Wufei, the Gundams are gone. Destroyed a year ago. And Duo was one of our team, too. He was a Gundam pilot. Look what he became."

Wufei cursed and dropped the other boy, turning and stomping in fuming fury towards the room Hiiro had moved his uncharred things to. There, in accordance with Trowa's prophecy, the Chinese boy found an empty closet, empty drawers, and no Hiiro. Only a short note.

_Trowa and Wufei,_

_I can't let this happen. You find him first, do what you want. I find him, and you never will._

_H.Y._

"DAMN!"

* * *

Faint humming came from somewhere in the darkness. Dorothy rolled over, feeling the damp sheets underneath her naked body. She snuggled deeper into the warm blankets, satisfied with herself and the world. Eyes still closed, the woman smiled as she thought on why she'd been so exhausted. The humming drummed into her skull and she knew it was his voice, happy, so happy. His happiness filled every pore of her and multiplied into an almost tangible joy. _Love . . . this is love._

"Dorothy," his voice meandered closer, and then she felt his hand close on her shoulder, "Dorothy-dear, sweetling, darling heart, it's time to get up." She felt the tender sweep of his finger across her cheek and smiled lazily. Her face leaned into his touch, which pulled away sooner than she liked. A whimper rose from her throat. "Dorothy, get up."

"I don't want to; it's so warm here—"

A tight iron hand dug relentlessly under the blanket, finding her throat and wrapping tightly about it. Her eyes opened wide just in time to see the other hand fly towards her. The resulting and resounding SMACK seemed to echo through her ears. Dorothy, shuddering beneath his grip, dared to look up through her eyelashes. The indigo eyes, before so wide and confused, so innocent . . . now they swam with crimson fury.

"I said it's time to get up," his growling left no room for thoughts of pleading, "We're going to have company soon, and I want my doll dressed up all nice and pretty." He pulled her up close to him, the scent of darkness wafting up through her nostril from his skin and clothing. Those arms wrapped around her again as they had before, only this time the soft tenderness held within them gave way to the true coldness. She shivered within that embrace. "Don't forget, Dorothy-dear, that I need you."

_I need you. I need you._

Never, "I love you."

Dorothy closed her eyes, forcing back tears. Shinigami held her tightly.

End Chapter Seven.


	9. Chapter 8

**I got lazy about reposting these old chapters. Here you go. Sorry about that.**

**Disclaimer:** Aw, you know Gundam Wing don't belong to me.

**Wayward – Chapter Eight**

Sally absently stroked the loose ebony hair that blanketed her white pillow beneath its silken sheen. That lovely dark hair. Wufei slept peacefully beside her. Sally's own mind teemed with thoughts, worries, and the first inklings of panic as she looked on his slack face. Tomorrow the search for demon Duo would begin, and at that thought she swallowed back a rise of black bile mixed with tears. She slid closer to him, her arms wrapping around his bare waist. Wufei shifted, sighing heavily in his sleep as he turned to nuzzle his face into her neck and resume his deep slumber. To think only a couple of years ago she had seen him as a teenager, a noble and mature one yes, but a teenager nonetheless. He'd been her equal in their work, but beneath her feminine notice as a potential mate. Now she clung to him desperately. Her mouth would not open to form the weak and betraying words, _I'm scared, Wufei. I'm scared for you. I'm scared you won't come back. _

So serene, his face. Not the face of one who planned to set out on probably the most dangerous mission of his entire career. Not OZ nor Mariemaia's disillusioned army could have posed more of a threat to her sweet chauvinist than Duo.

She closed her eyes shut tightly, seeing behind her lids the image of Trowa screaming at the body of poor Quatre, blood and brains spewing from that ugly bullet wound. Betraying her, she felt her arms and legs begin to tremble and a deep sob rocked her chest, causing an aching pain. Distinct memories of gore and violence from warring days did not cause so potent a reaction in her, but that one memory, that one thought of Quatre so brutalized caused a rise from her stomach and she turned over in bed away from Wufei. Almost dry-heaving herself off of the soft mattress, Sally barely had enough awareness to realize when her lover's tired arms wrapped around her carefully.

"Shhh," she heard his calm voice through her retches and coughs, "It's fine, Sally. Everything will be fine." Gentle strokes on her hair slowly soothed Sally into a calm sobbing, ashamed at herself for showing him, Wufei of all people, this female side of her emotions. She gulped down a sob and buried her face in her hands. "I know," he murmured softly in her ear, seemingly in tune with the thoughts that plagued her, "I know, Sally. It's okay. I know."

* * *

Black black black and more endless black in all directions no matter which way she turned or looked it was all black and she thought maybe there was a small sound a footstep a voice a pleading but no that couldn't be because there was nothing and nothing and blackness and everyone knew that blackness equaled nothing and where there was nothing there couldn't be people . . .

. . . and the voices they swarmed all around her some from one side and some from the other and some were slow and vague and didn't seem to know anything and they called the her to tell them what they didn't know but the others now they knew what was going on and they ran and ran and scurried along in their business but none of them paid any attention to her or to the other voices then there were the voices that were somewhere in the middle not many of those but they saw her and welcomed her and told her that she was one of them now and she might as well get used to the blackness because that was all there ever ever ever was and none of them had ever figured out how to get back into that wonderful wonderful world of light and color . . .

. . . then there was the single silent spot among the busy voices that caught her attention. It made her slow down and pay attention to it, blocking out the rest and concentrate only on this blissful quiet. Other busy voices were more quiet than others, but only this one possessed a complete and utter silence. Less a voice then, she decided, and more a wandering soul. Without the chatter that made up the rest of the souls, this one managed to project a feeling of confusion and loss. The mind, however, was sharp and it served to ground her.

_Hello?_ she asked, not even knowing if this person would be able to hear her from her dark place, _Are you lost?_

The mind snapped to attentiveness, confusion pushed away under layers of strict control. "Who's there?" That voice intrigued her more, because it sounded familiar to her non-corporeal ears. "You're going nuts, Yui," the voice muttered, presumably to itself, "that's what Wufei would say."

_Wufei? Uncle Wufei? I remember him . . . he wasn't always very nice._

"What the he- Mariemaia?"

_Mariemaia? Who's that? Is that me?_

"I . . . I don't know." More confusion, different this time. "Are you?" A pause while she considered this question, but before she could answer: "Where the hell are you?"

_You shouldn't say that word. Miss Une will get mad._

"You ARE Mariemaia." Images of previous times when he'd said that word or worse, and been reprimanded sternly by a tall women with hard eyes but a kind smile. Miss Une. And Uncle Hiiro. And Uncles Trowa, Quatre, and Duo. She knew and loved them all. Except . . . except . . .

_Uncle Duo's done something really, really bad! _Another sound entered her consciousness, not one of the voices she previously heard, but the small, sickly sound of her own weeping. _I don't know what, but I- I can't see anything or move! It's all blackness, Uncle Hiiro! Help me! _With this significance came another thought, another piece of knowledge the voices had kept from her. The busy voices who paid no mind were the thoughts and souls of the living. Those who were vague at best were the souls of the dead. _Uncle Quatre . . . he . . . he's not with you anymore, is he?_

"No," the reply was slow, reluctant, and she could tell that this was not the only heavy worry weighting down Hiiro's mind, "he's not. Mariemaia . . . did . . . did Du- er Uncle Duo . . . did he give you any shots?"

She stopped, having to retreat back a bit into herself to think on this and figure out the answer. Memories of the recent past slowly solidified, forming in her misty excuse for a mind. _Yeah . . . yeah, he did. And after that I started feeling weird. What was it?_

"It wasn't important." But the barely hidden sorrow in his voice told her differently. "I just needed to know, so I'll . . . I'll . . . be able to find the antidote." Another lie. Heaviness shrouded him now, a heaviness that conveyed his fear and defeat. "Can you tell me where you are? Or show me?"

_No, I don't think so._

"Damn."

_But . . . but if you follow my voice I think you can find it._

"Then keep talking."

* * *

Albert paced outside the door. Within the two remaining former pilots were trapped in a last conference before they set off in search of their wayward comrade. He had no doubt at all that they would be able to find the demon-boy and rid the world of that polluted presence. Otherwise the thought he contemplated would be complete and total suicide. He took a deep breath and ran his shaking fingers through disarrayed hair.

_Albert, you idiot . . . this is . . . if they can't destroy him, or take away his powers, you're a goddamned dead man, you know that?_

"Fuck," he whispered and turned around just as the door flew open. Albert froze in place, gulping down the lump of fear that lodged in his throat as Wufei settled dark eyes on him. Those same eyes had fixed on him when the boy first arrived, and passed over him just as quickly, writing the doctor off as someone not worth his time. Now those black orbs looked at him in confusion.

"What are you doing here?"

"I-I-I . . ."

"We don't have time for this," the boy growled, his taller companion moving from behind him through the doorway, "We know you wish us well, but if you can't spit it out . . ." They pushed past him roughly, gazes settled on the dangerous path ahead.

Summoning up the very lowest dredges of his courage, Albert finally managed to force the words out.

"I know where Duo is!" He stood there, breathing heavily from the exertion of saying that one short sentence. They both turned ever so slowly, black and green eyes glaring at him, boring through him until he wanted to look and see if the wall behind him were burnt. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and related what he knew might get him killed right then and there. "I planted both bombs, the one in Hiiro's room and the one in Epyon."

Pain flared where the back of his head struck the wall for the second time in as many days. This time Trowa's arm pressed sideways against his throat, effectively cutting off Albert's air supply. He choked, clawing against the thin arm, finding it much stronger than he first thought. Even as his nails raked bloody lines across that pale flesh, Trowa glared hard at him, unflinching.

"You tried to kill them," he growled, visible eye sparking dangerously, "You tried to kill Quatre."

"Y-you—" he had to pause to cough, "You don't understand!"

"Let him go, Trowa. Let him explain."

Through tears and fading light Albert saw Wufei place a golden hand on Trowa's shoulder. Dark pools glared at him as the tall boy began to slowly back away. Albert sucked in air like a Hoover, gulping and coughing, nearly choking on his own desperation. He noticed that Wufei kept a hand on Trowa.

"I'm sorry, I truly am. You have no idea—"

"Spare us," Wufei spat, hands clenching tighter on his friend's shoulder. "Just tell us what's going on."

"I've been working for Duo. I was working for him before Hiiro and Quatre came to Sanch." Albert rubbed his throat, taking a few more deep breaths. "The night he got in to . . . to kill Relena, my little girl found him. She was on her way to the kitchen." To his everlasting shame, the doctor felt tears welling in his eyes and took off his glasses to wipe at them. "Sanyu is six years old. He took her for no other reason than she delighted him. He told me that if he ever got bored with her then he might find some use for me. That technically, until he returns her to me, I belong to him as surely as she does." He bowed his head and fluffed his hair once more with that same shaky hand. "Her mother died two years ago. I have nothing at all left in the world without Sanyu."

"Happiness."

Albert looked up, brows knitted together tightly. "What?"

"That's what Sanyu means. Happiness." Trowa stood free of fetters: Wufei had taken his hand away. Yet the tall boy didn't make a move forward. "I'm sure that you know, then, that Duo also took a nine year old girl."

"Mariemaia, yes."

"We'll get Sanyu when we get Mariemaia. I promise. Just take us to where they are."

"What about Hiiro?" Albert found his poise somewhere in a deep closet at the back of his soul and slipped it on carefully. "Isn't he coming with us?"

"Hiiro . . ." The two glanced at each other, words passing through their eyes instead of their lips. Albert pressed his lips together tightly to keep from accusing them of not trusting him. At last, Trowa spoke aloud, "Hiiro's gone. He's finding his own way."

"He'll never find Duo. Unless Duo wants to be found. The only person who could find this place is one that either knows where it is, or is being lead there."

"Then lead on."

* * *

Dorothy flinched as Duo leaned in and gave her a soft, possessive kiss on the forehead. The red silk dress that draped her slender form threatened to wrinkle beneath his tight fingers.

"You're lovely, Dorothy-dear, my doll, my plaything." He hooked her chin in his right index finger and lifted her down-turned face up so that their eyes met. No heat rose from her lowest parts, no throb or urge to touch him. She saw only the gleaming malice of his eyes and felt only fear and the faintest flaring of anger that she could be so docile. She let her eyes drop. "Dorothy," his voice dropped into tones of warning and he shook her chin to force her eyes back to his, "you haven't forgotten that you're mine, have you?" As she stared on those eyes, her own image of them appeared there and over-rode the true orbs . . . wide indigo eyes, filled with laughter, innocence, confusion . . . and later, towards the end, could she even dare to think . . . love? "Dorothy!" He shook her head by the chin once more.

"N-No. I haven't forgotten."

"Good. Now," he released her and began pacing, "Galer is leading them here. I always knew he would, when given complete control of himself. He's more righteous than he thinks." He paused before the full length mirror and Dorothy waited. Her crimson gloved fingers clenched slightly. If he died, she reminded herself, then the Duo she loved would die as well. "Dorothy . . ." He turned back to her and took a few steps forward, a hand reached out. His eyes were those of her true lover. "Dorothy, did I hurt you?" Before she could even smile, let alone answer, he stumbled backwards, hands moved to either side of his head, lips stretched and curled into an ugly scowl. "Dammit! Goddammit, Quatre! Damn you to Hell and Tartarus!" A crash resounded through the room as Shinigami flung an arm through the mirrored glass, shattering it like the pieces of his own soul. Dorothy recognized this rage . . . she'd seen it the day that poor Hilde girl dared to annoy him too much. As far as she could tell, no one ever noticed when Hilde vanished.

Duo lifted his eyes, bloodshot but crimson also in another way, to her face. Too late she saw the glass wrapped in slender fingers and she slid backwards in time to miss getting her throat slit, but his following stroke cut a deep line in her left cheek.

Fear. White-hot. Blinding. _Get away, get away, getawaygetawaygetaway!_

Dorothy heard a series of short, strangled whimpers and as she stumbled away from the glass and the walking weapon that wielded it she realized the sounds rose from her own throat. Shinigami lunged for her again, moving more slowly that the speed his power gave him. Pure fury twisted his face, fury that had no other focal point but the one she provided.

"Damn that weak bastard!" he shouted as he arced the sharp mirror piece towards her again, landing a nick on the surface of her neck. She lifted her hands to block his assault. Her reward came as the harsh cutting of glass through flesh and vein. He slashed her wrists.

"Stop!" she cried, her back hitting the wall. Sobbing, Dorothy's legs turned as liquid as tears beneath her and she sank to the floor, still holding her bleeding arms before her. "Please! You need me! YOU NEED ME!!"

Through her closed eyes and shield of bloody arms Dorothy heard him pause, heard the heavy heaves as he stood above her. Then there came the thud of that mirror shard hitting the carpeted floor. Hard hands pulled her arms away from her face. Those hands covered the wounds at her cheek and neck, warmth flooding from the god into her mortal flesh, forcing the blood to flow backwards into her skin and heal it. She dared to open her gaze and look on him. His face and eyes were hard as his hands, but a different hardness from his previous fury. Anger still laced that stone expression, but anger not directed outward at her, but inward. Dorothy stared at him as he grasped her hands and yanked her stained and ruined gloves off. A spark of grief lit those indigo orbs as he saw the damage he'd wrought. He sent the healing warmth into her wrists, but paused as the wounds reached the scar phase. He looked up at her, wavering immortal eyes meeting fear-filled mortal ones. With a fierce sort of desperation he lifted her newly scarred wrists into her vision.

"Remember this," he said to her, the pleading in his gaze over-coming the growl in his voice, "If things get too . . . dangerous for you . . . remember this and do what you have to." His orbs searched her own. "Do you understand?"

She nodded, unable to speak. A shiver passed through her as she thought on what he'd just said and the unspoken agreement that passed between them. This was the will and wish of her Duo, her love, not the one who masqueraded in his body, the one she called master. The hardness completely melted from his expression in a beautiful moment, and he lifted a hand to her once injured cheek, caressing it so softly.

"I don't know how it happened, Dorothy. A year ago I would have said it to be impossible. But I love you."

Her heart flew at the same time her stomach dropped. A joyous lightness overtook her head at his words, words she'd been waiting to hear from his lips. Lifting a shaking hand to his lips, passing her fingers over that soft surface, she watched as he closed his eyes and kissed her fingers gently and whispered her reply.

"I love you too, Duo." Her body, weakened more by emotion than by loss of blood he'd restored, fell into his embrace, her eyes closing gratefully as she felt his arms circle her form as if she were porcelain. His shuddering breath brushed over the top of her head as he breathed, holding in sobs; she could tell.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It's alright, I under—"

The door swung open.

* * *

"It's up in the mountains," Galer explained as he drove their Jeep through the kingdom of Sanch, a kingdom that had no clue of how much trouble rested within its supposedly safe borders. Trowa gazed out of the window dispassionately, giving no indication of where his mind rested or if he even heard the doctor speaking. Wufei, in the backseat, listened but thought of other things more prominent.

_"Sally," he brushed her hair from her face, golden fingers slipping over her tears and erasing them, "You're afraid, aren't you?" He held her so tightly, tight enough so she couldn't slip away from him even if that were what she wanted. She wouldn't answer, clamped her mouth closed against reply. "It's alright for you to be afraid. In this situation, I can find no way to fault you." He smiled softly. "I'm afraid, Sally." Her head turned swiftly, wide eyes locking on his . . . her beautiful eyes. Trailing tender fingers along the side of her face, his gaze following, the boy pressed his lips to hers in a brief, almost chaste kiss. "Anyone mortal would be afraid in this circumstance, male or female."_

_"I don't want you to go." A simple statement, made without an accenting sob or desperate, grasping fingers, just a strong, blue gaze. He felt in his chest a rising pride, knowing that he had in his arms a brave and capable female, and that she lay there of her own free will. Chauvinistic as he knew it was, he held her tighter and reveled in the knowledge that this woman, this magnificent creature, belonged to him. _

_"Marry me, Sally Po."_

_Her gaze turned wondering for a moment, then joyful, then prideful. "Is that it? A grunted 'Marry me Sally Po'? If you think for one moment that I'm going to swoon over THAT—"_

_She silenced as his lips caught hers, forcefully, daring her to break this kiss. He shifted himself under the sheets, settling his body over hers with a few deft motions. His lips pressed harder on hers, insistent, insensitive until he heard the moan rise forth. Then he pulled his mouth back, looking down, feeling the emotion pouring freely from his eyes. _

_"Marry me, Sally Po, because I can't imagine coming back from this mission if I have nothing to come back to. Marry me because I love you, you hard-headed, strong-willed onna!" A grin crept across his face, tugging his lips upwards as he realized the excessive silliness of his own words, even if they were true and heartfelt. _

_She gave no answer but the gentle snaking of her arms around him, pulling him down to her—_

"Are you listening?"

Wufei gave a start, hand dropping from where his chin perched on it, blinking his dark eyes in Galer's direction. In the rear-view mirror he could see those brown eyes flicker back towards him.

"I don't really expect _him_ to be listening, but I thought you at least would want to know a little about what's going on."

"Uh . . ." _Damn._ Wasn't he supposed to be the practical one, the dutiful one, devoted to justice and in seeing justice done? Didn't that mean paying attention when information was given? "If you could repeat what you said, I'd be grateful."

Galer sighed and backed up what seemed like quite a bit to begin his explanation of the things Duo told him again. Wufei, though his heart and mind wanted to slip back into the memory of earlier, he forced them to focus on the present and the monotonous tone of the doctor's voice.

* * *

Hiiro watched the two for a moment, trying to decide between the two emotions that presented themselves. While he shifted through these, Hiiro studied the shock shown in Duo's wide eyes and the fear in Dorothy's gaze. He also couldn't help but see the closeness between the two. More importantly, the lack of space.

"Hiiro." Prussian eyes met those sparking orbs of power and in them he saw the crimson malice Wufei described. The shock on Duo's face fell away, revealing hard scorn and a cold sort of amusement. "I guess I became too arrogant," he said, dropping his hold on Dorothy and rising, "I didn't have an alarm installed because I thought my shield would be enough." The braided one approached so that Hiiro could smell the strange scent emanating from Duo's clothing and his skin, could feel the power surrounding the boy in a tangible aura. He felt the need to step away but his feet refused to move. Narrowed indigos glared into Hiiro's own Prussians, through them and into that newly discovered soul. _Oh please . . . don't let him see . . . not yet . . . I'm not ready!_ "How DID you find this place anyway, dearest Hiiro?"

"Mariemaia."

Duo's eyebrows lifted at the answer, given so quickly.

"You injected bio-extract X51173A into her, didn't you?" Hiiro frowned, clenching his fists at his sides. No longer did his feet fight to flee; his entire body reflected anger on behalf of the little girl so brutally used. Duo merely shrugged.

"And if I did? I've had her long enough. You know there's nothing that can be done." He seemed so proud of himself! "But that doesn't interest me. What interests me is that you came on your own. Arriving early to a party really is quite rude, you know. Your host may not be ready, and may be caught in a compromising position. Right, my sweetling?" Duo turned and flashed the quiet Dorothy a grin and a wink. The woman flushed and Hiiro's stomach roiled.

"Why did you do this? What are you trying to accomplish?"

"Oh Hiiro!" Duo heaved a melodramatic sigh and tossed his hands in the air, "You're so BORING! You've got a one track mind, really!" Another sigh and a wave of the hand later, Hiiro found his hands bound in much the same way they'd been on Barge. "I don't have time to bother with you right now. I'm expecting our two remaining comrades to join us soon and I can't have you getting in my way."

"No!" Hiiro stepped closer, allowing that burst of emotion, the flare of desperation to consume him. "Duo, they're coming here to kill you!"

"Kill me?" The braided god laughed, a cold and horrible sound, so unlike the light, laid back titter Hiiro missed more than he'd realized. "They CAN'T. None of you seem to get it yet! I'm a fucking GOD! I'm immortal. I'll be dancing through space long after your bodies have returned to stardust!" The self-proclaimed deity placed an intimate hand on Hiiro's chest. "Begone!" he shouted with a certain childish glee.

And Hiiro found himself somewhere else entirely.

* * *

The room darkened visibly. A palpable sense of thought, of plotting, filled the space between their two bodies, and Dorothy struggled to breath normally. When he turned to her, that thoughtful expression gracing his handsome face as he gazed on her, she knew suddenly that she wouldn't see her Duo again. He rushed across the distance and grabbed her roughly by the arms.

"Dorothy, how would you like to make this game a little more interesting?" Oh that grin . . . so tight, so cruel. "Do you remember what my part of our deal was?" She nodded, and he shook her. "What was it?"

"You promised me a glorious battle."

"Now I'm going to give it to you." His hands clenched on his skin tighter and she felt a warmth flowing into her, similar to the warmth of his healing power. However, this grew and intensified, becoming an encompassing heat, threatening to burn her body up into ashes. Great orange light rose from the bottom of her vision and filled her eyes, nose, and mouth, which was open in a silent scream. _What are you doing? What are you doing to me? Oh God!_ "Welcome to the Divine, my sweetling."

End Chapter Eight.


	10. Chapter 9

**I got lazy about reposting these old chapters. Here you go. Sorry about that.**

**Disclaimer:** Aw, you know Gundam Wing don't belong to me.

**Wayward – Chapter Nine**

Trowa packed his single black duffel bag into the small space in the back of their shared vehicle. He and Wufei had one bag each. Galer worked on hauling the last of his three suitcases out from the inn they'd stayed the night in.

He allowed his eyes to wander over the little village Galer insisted they stop at. A flock of early sheep wandered lazily over their way, stopping to munch on some of the flowers potted outside the inn door. The inn itself was little more than a cottage with spare rooms, and only three at that. One of them already booked, Wufei and Trowa shared a room while Galer had the privilege of keeping the last to himself.

The people nodded and greeted him, all calling him "Stranger" but acknowledging him nonetheless with their bright village smiles. The air chilled him, but they walked around with short sleeves and the manner of those grown in the constantly cool mountain temperatures. This place snuggled itself deeply into one of the small grooves of the range, tucked between two mountain peaks that rose only halfway to the height of their tallest brother. The atmosphere, saturated with early morning mist that would never quite evaporate, gave off a silent, contented aura even through the chatter of the inhabitants. _So quaint,_ Trowa thought with the barest allowance of a smile, _Quatre would love it._

Shut it out, lock it away, don't let grief and memories gain control. Shut it out, lock it away, don't let grief and memories gain control. Shut it out, lock it away . . .

Lowering his eyes from the scenery, Trowa repeated this silent mantra, a reminder that he could grieve after he dispatched with Duo. Barely noticed at his side, Galer huffed, puffed, and heaved his final suitcase into the back.

"That's the last of it," he breathed, mist curling up from his words. The doctor wore three layers of clothing but still shivered beneath all of that protection.

"Then let's get going," Wufei grunted, already climbing into the backseat. Despite what the other two may think, Trowa had noticed the way their Chinese companion stared out into his own memories, ones that were much happier than those Trowa obsessed over. No one could fail to notice the grin of Wufei's face the morning before, or the gentle glow from Sally. Especially when their happiness reflected that which he had lost.

Trowa took up his perch in the front seat while Galer walked around to claim his much prized spot as the driver. He shifted gears, looked behind him to make sure no errant villagers crossed his path, then slowly backed up to align the Jeep with the small dirt road.

"This road only goes so far," Galer said as he braked to point up to the tallest mountain, "About three fourths of the way. After that we'll have to walk." His face paled somewhat and Trowa wondered if the doctor remembered his three heavy suitcases.

"Walk is good," came from the backseat, "It makes a man stronger." A pause, then: "A woman as well."

After that shocking acquiescence, the three spent a good hour in silence, even Galer. Before, fueled by obvious fear and nervousness, the doctor chattered endlessly about several inconsequential people, places, and things. It seemed his terror finally overtook his need for speech.

"How do you know where this place is, anyway?" Wufei finally asked, breaking their long and quietly agreed on silence.

"Duo called me up here a few days ago, just before he had me plant the bomb for Hiiro." Trowa noticed his fingers tighten around the steering wheel, knuckles washing white. "He told me to come pick up Sanyu because he'd become bored with her. When I arrived, he said he'd changed his mind and sent me home without her." Any last remaining remnants of anger Trowa felt towards the doctor melted as he saw the tear that slid down the stubbled face. The tall one wondered, had Quatre been the one kidnapped, what would he have done?

Simple. Played the kidnappers game until he found an opportunity to turn the tables.

Exactly what Galer had done.

* * *

He studied his prisoner carefully, knowing that a different approach must be taken for this boy than the others. Hiiro kept to himself, Duo thought, and he must be dealt with in a manner facilitating communication with such a stoic soul. Damn him, for the Prussian-eyed one remained, even two years later, the hardest person Duo had ever had to read, and even with his new abilities there was a steel mental wall between his immortal mind and that of the mortal Perfect Soldier. _What type of person can block the mind of a god?_ Most of those walls he could most likely break if he prodded hard enough, but then Hiiro would be aware of his attention. However, there was one portion of the prisoner's mind so built up and protected, Duo knew it would take insistent mental pummeling to even begin to discover what hid in that corner of Hiiro's mind. Deep curiosity veiled his indignant anger at being kept out by a mere mortal.

"Have you had time to think about your rudeness?" he asked, stepping out from the shadows he inhabited, allowing Hiiro to notice his presence.

"Trowa is insane with grief and anger, Duo." Hiiro looked up, not a single spark of surprise flaring through his eyes as he caught Duo's gaze. The god noticed the rise in the other one's heart rate and body temperature, became confused by it, and dismissed the reaction into the back of his mind. "He's going to kill you,, if you don't run away now."

"Run away?" Shock coursed through his body, and Duo didn't know whether to laugh or scream in fury, "_Run away?!?_ Why the hell should I run away? Why don't you understand?!?"

"I understand that something's happened to you. I understand that you are different . . . vastly more powerful . . . but this is Trowa we're talking about, and you killed Quatre. You killed the most good, most innocent of us all, the one Trowa loved. He _will_ find a way to kill you."

Duo stared. Hiiro gazed on him with such a strange expression. Determination, anger, desperation . . . and what? Duo narrowed his eyes and rifled through the boy's mind, linking that other, unnamable thing to the blocked off room of Hiiro's mind. Without any warning, the urge to tell this boy everything washed over him and Duo found himself kneeling in front of the chair where Hiiro sat, head bowed, eyes following the young god's form.

"You want to know, don't you? You want to know what happened to me, and why I'm doing this. Alright. I'll tell you . . ."

* * *

_I couldn't take it anymore, I really couldn't. It was all so normal, so settled, so . . . stale. Hilde was nice enough, I guess, but she wanted more than friendship and I really just couldn't stand her constant hints anymore. She actually tried to seduce me. That's when I made my decision. I wanted to see the world anyway, and I saved up some money over the past few months. So that's what I did. I went around the world, Hiiro, and by the gods it's a wonderful place! It's so green and blue and other, unknown colors. The people who live there think they've named all of the colors of their planet but they haven't. Anyway, that's not my point._

_I saw all of the most beautiful places. Rome, Ireland, Paris, Mount Fuji . . . yes I even went to Japan. Your distant motherland, even if your family probably hasn't lived on Earth in several generations. Japan is where this took place, this event that has the four- oh, sorry- the three of you so baffled._

_One night I stood in the hotel balcony window. I didn't have much money left and knew my trip would have to come to an end soon, but I'd splurged on the fancy hotel room anyway. It was night, by the sea, with the moon shining happy beams on the water. Moon beams dance on the ocean at night, did you know that? It's a visual illusion caused by the waves unseen in the darkness, but it's ethereal even so. Makes a person wonder if maybe, just maybe, they'd been wrong their entire life and some sort of God does exist. Who else would think to make moon beams dance?_

_Down there, walking by the dancing sea, a man stopped suddenly and looked up. Right at me, straight into my eyes. Nighttime should have blocked my view of him, especially since it seemed to gather all about him as though he were a magnet for darkness. But I could see his face and everything about him so clearly. Black hair, hair that on a normal person would have blended perfectly into the surrounding shadows but remained separated from them by a shade or two. Dark eyes, so dark, fathomless but not malignant. I sensed that from the distance; this man had no intention of harming me or anyone. Also, there was a message in his gaze. A calling. That man stood on that beach on that night specifically for the purpose of finding and speaking with me. I could decline. I could stay where I was and pass up this chance. But if I passed it up, there would be no second opportunity. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I did know that I could never, ever pass up such an opening. Not while my soul lives for adventure._

_So I went. I left that hotel balcony a mortal, and went down to the beach to meet my fate. That man . . . he told me so much about his long, long life. He wasted no time in letting me know who he was. The previous Shinigami did not mince words. However, the things he told me about himself were not only private, but far too much information to tell you here. As it was, dawn broke over the ocean, casting out the dancing moon beams before he made his offer. _

_This immortal man wanted to die. He couldn't, however, just die. That would leave the world without a God of Death. He needed a successor. Wandering about as he did, he'd heard about me and how I'd adopted his name as my own. He didn't even have to ask. I knew before he looked at me with those pleading dark eyes that he offered me what I'd been hoping for since the final end of the wars: a chance to break forever out of the stagnation of the same old life. _

_It isn't easy to kill a god. I can tell you that right now because I know from experience. Even if the weapon is made by a god specifically for that purpose, it takes quite a while for such a large and powerful life force to drain completely. I speared him with a sword, one that he called from mid air. Through his semi-immortal heart. Semi because the moment that blade entered his beating organ, the heart began to slowly die. To this day I don't know how he managed to stave off Time long enough to complete the entire death process; it's a power I have yet to learn. He did, however, and at long last the spark of immortality faded from his dark eyes, followed soon after by that dimmer light of life. Hiiro . . . you have no idea . . . the deaths of mortals are ugly, painful, and gruesome. The death of a god is something else entirely . . . the death of a god is the passing of perfection, that which has no business inhabiting the Earthly realm in the first place, into oblivion. The death of a god is . . . beautiful. _

_To be brief, I killed him and took his power. _

_And I almost instantly knew what had to be done. _

_But I think, in those last moments before Death passed into his own realm, that I saw a flicker of regret in those eyes . . . _

* * *

Duo paused, his eyes focusing again on Hiiro and the present instead of that long ago night and that beautiful god-death. To his bewilderment, the deity met a gaze not of stoney blue walls, but wide Prussians giving off a tangible feeling of fear. And that strange emotion Duo had yet to place. For a still and nearly perfect moment, they remained there in utter silence. What WAS that look, that expression?

"What has to be done?"

Duo blinked. "What?"

"What has to be done, Duo?" Hiiro repeated, almost impatiently. With a jolt Duo realized that there were no more walls around the boy's emotions. "What is it you knew had to be done when you became Shinigami?"

"Wars, Hiiro. Human beings die in wars, or if there are no battles between countries or colonies, they find ways to wage little wars on each other over clothes or race or religion. It's painful, Hiiro. Not just for them, but for me." His fingers squeezed into fists without his permission, tears springing to his indigo eyes. "When their souls pass through me on their way to the Other Realm, I feel it all. Every minute bit of suffering they ever experienced in their entire lives. But most of all I feel the pain of their deaths. I can't take it, and I don't want them to suffer anymore!" His chest heaved with the force of his words, the strength of his conviction. Humans shouldn't have to live in so much pain, he knew that. He knew it from his days as a young child on the streets, and from that night when he returned to his beloved church, his loved Sister Helen, and found both destroyed.

"What does this have to do with Aurora?"

"Don't you see?" Pride at his own ingenuity and his concern for humanity filled him. Once he explained it, Hiiro would understand! He had to, the plan was too perfect, too kind! "If they all sleep, then they can't hurt each other! There will never be anymore war or death of unnatural reasons! Everyone will die peacefully, of old age and natural causes, with no pain for them." His eyes pleaded with Hiiro to understand, he knew it, and it shamed him, but this boy claimed the position as one of Duo's best friends, though the god had abused those friends recently. But Hiiro merely continued to stare at him, no obvious change.

"Why Mariemaia?"

"Because," Duo gladly let this spill, hoping with every word that his friend would come to understand that he only did these things for a higher cause, "I needed to find out if Aurora is still active after all of the latent years. As a test subject, Mariemaia was perfect, used as a symbol by her own family for war. A child, yet used as a figurehead for one of the greatest atrocities human beings can create, an innocent forced to lead the corrupted. Isn't it only right that she be the first to find peace?"

"And Dorothy?"

"A gateway. Souls pass into my body to get to the Other Realm, but it isn't that easy. They get stuck there, build up, and I have to release them all in one burst. She's my gateway. His was different. My successor would have had a different one, if I weren't taking away the need for a successor." Duo bit his bottom lip, suddenly feeling for all the world like a child seeking approval from a parent who hoarded such things. Hiiro's eyes shimmered.

"You're insane."

Those words shattered the closeness sewn into the fabric of the room, tore it apart with a growling ferocity. Duo rose, kicked Hiiro hard in the stomach, and turned his back on the coughing boy.

_Why?!? Why doesn't anyone ever understand?!?_

* * *

_"Here, you're going to need this. Trust me."_

Trowa understood now why Galer shoved the sword into his hands shortly after they'd left the Jeep. Only he'd much prefer to have a gun right about now. Crouching as he was behind this tree, the sword wasn't going to do him any good. The banged one dared to lean to his left and peer around the thankfully thick trunk. Thirty feet away stood the entrance to Duo's mountain mansion; between that and them, Dorothy blocked their way. Dorothy in red-tinted battle armor. Dorothy who could throw fireballs.

"Damn, this isn't good."

Trowa just nodded at Wufei's voice drifting from behind the large boulder than had become the Chinese boy's refuge. As it was, Wufei suffered from a burn on his left shoulder, probably third degree. No doubt in any of their minds that she'd been aiming at his heart. None of them, not even Galer, had really expected such a greeting.

Galer . . .

"Where's the doctor?" Trowa muttered, knowing Wufei would hear.

"I don't know," came the muffled reply, "I haven't seen him in a . . . oh shit. HEY!" Wufei shot up, waving for Dorothy's attention, "EVIL EYEBROWS! OVER HERE!" Not knowing why except that Wufei had to have some reason, Trowa stood as well and moved from his hiding place just in time to see Galer collide with the blonde woman. No decision necessary, the tall one dashed forward, lowering his sword blade to her throat even as she shoved the doctor off of her. Her mouth scowled, but her eyes pleaded.

"You can't kill me," she growled up at him even as her eyes beckoned for him to try anyway, "He's made me a deity, he's given me power." But she didn't move, didn't lift a hand to blast him, didn't try to get away.

"Oh? So you think you're immortal, then?" Trowa flicked the blade over her cheek, satisfied with the trail of bright red blood that sprung from the wound, "You look pretty mortal to me." He couldn't help the derisive snort that escaped his nose, "Did you really think that bastard would share his immortality with you? And power? I'll bet your little fireballs are nothing compared to what he can do." He didn't really plan to do it. He really didn't want to do it. But as he spoke, his words substantiating her fears, and the mask fell away from her face completely, her eyes called to him even more strongly.

_Kill me. Kill me. Oh God please, !!!_

Closing his gaze against tears, Trowa ran the blade through her throat just to quiet the screaming of those eyes.

* * *

"D-Duo," Hiiro coughed, still reeling from the kick, "Duo, I have to—" _tell you,_ the sentence went unfinished.

"Shut up! Why should I listen to you, you won't listen to me! You don't understand a thing I'm talking about!" The boy paced back and forth across the dungeon-like room, braid swinging wildly each time he spun to pace back across his previous footsteps. "I guess you have to be a god to understand. I gave Dorothy power, I would have made her a god if I could have . . ." Duo paused, turned slightly away so Hiiro couldn't see his face. Then he shook his head and waved away whatever thoughts distracted him, "But I can't. I can only make another god by dying and passing on my power to another, I know that much."

"Duo . . ." Could he really say it? "Duo . . ." Could he? "Duo, I . . ."

"WHAT?!? What IS it! For Hell's sake just spit it out!"

"Aishiteru . . ."

Duo kept pacing for a moment, the impact of the word lost on him for a good few seconds. Slowly, ever so slowly, the beautiful braided one began to pause, glance towards Hiiro, then look forward again. Breath rushed into Hiiro's lungs and back out again, causing his chest to heave as he struggled to capture this air and make it useful. Dammit! Damn those frail emotional walls! Doctor J and his cohorts should have built stronger ones!

"You love Relena." The statement came from nowhere, taking him off guard. Hiiro glanced up at that name, the grief still stinging in his chest each time she was mentioned.

"Yes," Hiiro nearly sobbed the word out, remembering her face, bloodied from those evil nails, "I loved her. But she and I were . . . different. It never would have . . .worked." He coughed again, not because of his stomach. "Didn't you ever wonder why she stopped chasing me finally?"

"I thought she was busy." The god stated nastily.

"She and I spoke, and both agreed that our worlds were different, apart, and had to remain so for the sake of the United Earthsphere."

"When?"

"A year ago. When I woke up in her arms." Oh, the feel of those arms. He remembered it, and still ached for that feel again. But the more pressing urge came from watching Duo, those wonderful wavering eyes and that braid. Could it really be as soft as it looked? Now the pang to take this boy into his arms eclipsed the older ache. However, this urge was another he had never hoped to fullfill, so when Duo moved forward and removed his bonds, Hiiro's throat constricted as he stared on his long-time friend. Hardness invaded that smooth, pale plane, even as Duo lifted a hand to flick the stoic boy's bangs, almost indifferently. Those fingertips brushed his forehead and Hiiro gasped at the contact.

"There was a time, Hiiro," Duo began, a seriousness in his tone, "that I would have jumped to hear you say that."

Hiiro felt his eyes widen. For a moment his heart leaped so high at that admission that he forgot to take in the second meaning of those words.

"That time is gone." Duo's hand dropped, and Hiiro's heart followed. His head bowed, trying to keep in that hard lump lodged in his throat that threatened to spill out at any moment. Dammit. Damn it all, just damn everything. That's what he felt. Then he sensed Duo's hand at his cheek and looked up, into the stone face. In those eyes the god's intentions were written, and Hiiro knew he should stop it, but he couldn't bring himself to be deprived of one last comfort.

Duo's lips touched his, softly, in the most exquisite contact he'd ever known. Exquisitely brief, for in the next instant a coldness engulfed Duo, forcing him to back away, eyes shut tightly, hands on either side of his head. While Hiiro's lips tingled from that kiss, he watched as the object of his love and lust opened his mouth and eyes wide, horror and anguish falling over him.

"No . . . oh no . . . NO!!" Duo fell to his knees, rocking back and forth through his invisible pain. Though desire tried to propel Hiiro forward to quell that agony, common sense kept him rooted to the chair. A growl issued forth from the ball that was Duo, "He killed her . . . Trowa killed her."

And in that moment Hiiro understood fully why Duo would no longer jump hear his "Aishiteru". The tears flooding down the god's pale face said it all, as did the fury and agony shaking his thin frame at the knowledge of Dorothy's death. All hope died with her.

Duo vanished.

* * *

"Oh my God," Galer moaned from behind him, "Oh my God, you killed her, just like that." Trowa dared a glance at the doctor, to see he man running his hand through his thick hair. Behind those glasses his eyes stared out in wide circles. "You just . . . oh my God."

"Shut up," Trowa growled, yanking the sword out from Dorothy's throat. He backed away to join his two companions, legs trembling beneath him. He wouldn't let them give out. Not yet. "There isn't time for this. We've got to find—"

"No we don't," Wufei said, nodding towards the body Trowa had just left. He turned just in time to see a cloud of darkness coalesce into the kneeling form of Duo Maxwell. Trowa watched as the boy, shaking and pale, reached a quivering hand out to stroke the blood-splattered face and close those empty eyes forever. Tears streaked his face, and Trowa recognized in him the agony of losing one loved more than creation.

"Now you know."

Duo's eyes, dark violet with pain and fury, flickered up to the tall one, a dismal scowl marring his expression.

"Now you know," Trowa repeated, voice low, "how it feels."

"Inside," the god barked, lifting Dorothy's limp form into his arms. His cloud formed again, wrapping himself and the dead girl within its veil, and then the two were gone. Before the three- one with a burned arm, one trembling in fear, and one on the verge of exploding- the mansion's doors swung open. Not slowly, as is seen in cliché horror movies. The two wooden doors burst open with an animal fury, banging against each other and the walls behind them. Less an invitation and more a demand.

Inside waited the young god and whatever Fate would bring.

End Chapter Nine.


	11. Chapter 10

**I got lazy about reposting these old chapters. Here you go. Sorry about that.**

**Disclaimer:** Aw, you know Gundam Wing don't belong to me.

**Wayward – Chapter Ten**

_Where are you, mon petite cherie? _

She asked the question, as she always did, to the expansive sky above. The sun settled itself behind the horizon, turning the sky above it multiple shades of orange and blood red, finally fading into a dark navy blue. The bright orb seemed to mourn not only Mariemaia's disappearance, but its inability to answer Lady Une's passionate question. Four days, now that the sun climbed down the heavens to rest. Four days since her precious adopted daughter vanished without a trace. None of her grounded Preventers could find her, not even Chang Wufei, who had been the leading candidate. Come to think of it, when was the last time Wufei sent a report?

Une wanted desperately to be able to turn away from the window and shift through the pile of papers on her desk. She wanted to be able to look through them a fifth time and find something she'd overlooked, some shred of hope. She wanted to be able to function.

_Sorry, Preventer Une, _her mind chortled as her eyes studied the horizon, _functioning is not one of your allotted privileges for the day._

She sighed, pressing a hand to the window glass. Never had she imagined missing anyone with the same degree as she missed His Excellency Treize, but the man's daughter had almost filled that hole he left in her heart. Memories of danger told her that the new part of her heart was imperiled. But she could do nothing.

Une blinked as she realized that minutes had passed, but the sky remained as bright as before her mind wandered. Usually it took only moments for the sky's colors to shift, change, and melt away into some new pattern. But the trail of orange into deep, blood-red remained, sending a chill coursing down the length of her spine.

_Red . . . blood red . . . if blood has not been spilled already, it will be soon._

* * *

On another part of the same planet, in a different country altogether, another woman stared at the blazing sky and felt a terrible foreboding. This one did not settle, however, for allowing a window to stand between herself and the bloody sky. Sally Po remained rooted to her spot outside in Sanch Palace's lovely gardens, but the flowers held her interest no more than the bugs that crawled over her shoes.

_What IS this? The sun shouldn't even be setting yet! _

Sally checked her watch once more to make absolute certain her mind had not collapsed. No, the device still said 4:34 pm. Her eyes lifted to the sun halfway set on the distance lands and the bright red painted above it across the sky. A fearful trembling began in her stomach, and she crossed her arms around herself for thin comfort. She really wanted his arms, his slender, strong arms around her. The lack of his presence made her feel so uneasy. The sun did not set in the late afternoon every day, and could it really be a coincidence that this bizarre happening occurred on the day and around the time Galer had estimated their party would reach Duo's abode? No. From somewhere in the deepest part of her mind, the part that would not lie to her no matter how much she wanted it to, the assurance arose; there could be no doubt that the blood-red sky came as a sick portent of things looming. Not in the distance, but only a mountain away. Sally closed her eyes.

_Don't do this to me, Wufei. Don't you dare get killed. I'll never forgive you if you do._

* * *

Wufei shuddered as the three of them stepped inside. One generally did not take up the invitation of one's enemy unless one held sure and true certainty of victory. Therefore, walking through the still swinging doors of Duo's mansion had to be the most idiotic thing any of them could have done.

_Don't do this to me, Wufei. Don't you dare get killed. I'll never forgive you if you do._

Sally? His breath caught upon hearing her voice, and his dark eyes glanced through the darkness for a glimpse of her.

"Don't bother, Wufei," came Duo's hard voice from across the massive hall, "It's a psychic echo. That's why I chose this place for my home; the land naturally sends its inhabitants the thoughts of those most concerned with them."

"Sanyu!" Galer cried, apparently hearing an echo of his own, "Sanyu! Where is she?" All fear drained from the doctor's face as he felt the closeness of his daughter, his one remaining family member. "Where IS SHE?!?"

"Calm yourself," Duo's voice echoed in a physical reaction akin to the psychic one, "She's alive. You can go searching for her if you like. None of my guards will stop you." A few wispy white forms hovered just on the edges of Wufei's sight, or perhaps his consciousness. They seemed to pose no threat, but Galer paused for a moment before they moved to allow him passage. The doctor vanished then, and Wufei wondered absently whether they would see him again, or if he would get lost in this castle of a mansion.

No, cathedral would be a better description, Wufei realized as his eyes adjusted to the sparse light. They stood in a foyer bathed in the thin, colored light given off by sunlight filtered through stained-glass. On either side of the hallway, six colored windows rested peacefully. At the right- in brilliant hues of mostly red, gold, and blue- the man known as Jesus Christ preached to his followers, broke bread and fish for the masses, and raised a dead man from the grave. At the left, in shades a bit darker than the others, though this could have been a trick of the light, Christ carried his cross in an eternal trek towards death, yet he also hung from that wooden wickedness. The last panels, the ones Wufei assumed had held images of Christ rising, showed nothing more than empty blackness and angry shards. He shivered, not daring a pause to wonder why blackness shone through those windows and not the sunlight from outside.

Above them rose pointed arches, stone monstrosities that barely held any resemblance to the graceful things of ancient Europe that they claimed parentage from. Those monuments had been built of grey stone, but these . . . he could not place the material used to create these twisted arcs, save that it shimmered with a deep darkness.

Wufei's eyes wandered again and fell on the pure white form of an angel standing between one of the windows. A moment passed before the Chinese boy realized that this was no real angel, but a statue. Her stone served to contrast the black arcs; the angel shone with a clean whiteness, uncorrupted by the virus that infected Duo and the rest of his warped possessions. She stood with hands pressed together in prayer, an infinitely sorrowful expression, as though any moment she might weep tears of stone.

"Are you ready?" Duo called to them, and Wufei looked up. At the other end of this simultaneously bright and dismal foyer, the young god stood bathed in dim light. In this place, however, the sunlight lost power, and none of its soft goldenness touched the braided one. A barrier seemed to exist between him and the light, a bubble from which his form and face in all its fury could be perfectly seen. Crimson swirled those eyes- not the crimson flecked indigos Wufei had seen when Duo possessed Sally- no, the boy's orbs flashed completely red, the color of blood. _Anger,_ Wufei thought, _this is what happens when one angers a god._ However, Duo held himself in a poise of serenity, and the rage in his face faded as he looked on. That sort of calm settled on those bent on revenge. That sort of calm could be, very much was, dangerous. He knew. That sort of calm laced Trowa's face as well, had for the recent past days. "Do you expect to fight me with that toothpick and win?" Duo nodded derisively towards the sword in Trowa's hand. "Good luck."

Wufei felt the change before he saw the shimmering. Around him the air nearly sparked, energy flowing faster than its normal custom. Then, around Duo's now outstretched hand, the atmosphere began to waver as it does when heat causes hallucinations on a well-traveled road. Blackness seemed to crawl from the twisted pillars, from the floor and the blank windows. From everywhere in this demented place, save the pure and untouched angel, darkness flowed to Duo, forming in his fingers as a large, black-bladed sword.

"Good luck," he spat again, a grin splitting his face. Then he lunged.

Never one to hold back in a good fight, Wufei nevertheless stepped away from this duel. None of his concern. Though two of his best friends, one admittedly insane, battled out their rage and grief on each other, Wufei reminded himself that this was not his dispute. Besides, his shoulder throbbed beneath his clutching hand. What good would he be to Trowa? No . . . better the tall one fought on his own.

Watching the two, seeing the sparks that flew each time blades collided, sensing the rising tension, it soon became evident that the two, while not matched in raw, god-like power, were near equal in mortal strength and skill. Duo lunged, Trowa parried. Trowa launched himself forward with blazing blade, Duo backed away and blocked. Both faces, when turned to him, could be seen to hold a strange meshing of serene patience and furious desire for revenge. Both men grieved, both men wanted the death of their opponent.

Through the stained-glass, Wufei thought he noticed a subtle shifting of light.

* * *

A full ten minutes passed before Hiiro could bring himself to rise. No longer bound, either physically or emotionally, the boy knew that somewhere in this building, Duo must be fighting for his immortal life. An image of Trowa, undamaged hand squeezing Quatre's dead throat and screaming crossed his mind. Oh by all the gods and everything good and holy, the tall one would not die unless he took Duo with him. Swallowing back the lump again, feeling it settle tightly into his chest, Hiiro walked forward. He placed his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and found to his unending shock that this entire time, the door had been unlocked.

One sneakered foot setting outside the door before the other, Hiiro looked first one way down the hall and then the other, wondering in something approaching panic which way he should go. Each dark pathway looked just like the other, twin choices that offered no hope of ever finding his way to Duo. _Just like that damned baka, _he thought, only half adoringly, _to create a home like a maze._

Which way? Right or left? Hiiro took a deep breath, steeled himself, and made his choice.

* * *

Clash, clang, spark, jab. Whirl, lunge, slide, swing. Whoosh, swish, grunt, laugh.

Time blurred into a series of moments filled with the sounds of battle. Could this be the beginning of that one power he had yet to fathom? Could Time be slowing for him? Somehow he doubted it. The illusion had to be caused by the steady image of Trowa's rock hard face and swift movements. Knowledge of the acrobat's training lost in the back of his mind, Duo came to remember that this boy, just like the rest of them, had skills bred into him and others taught. Swordplay was taught. Survival, however, came naturally.

He could use his godly abilities, but somehow that seemed unfair. Uncivilized in a battle man-to-man. Perhaps that came from the last remaining human part of his soul. Or maybe it came from the distant murmuring of a silken voice, the voice of that lovely creature stabbed through the throat, whose soul had no gateway to fly through from his body. She spoke to him from that place where souls resided, spoke and whispered, caressed him with her thoughts and her dead but not lost love. She encouraged him, though he couldn't make out most of what she said. _Dorothy . . . I love you . . . I need you . . . I want . . ._

He fell backwards at the feel of steel cutting through his flesh. Immortal as it was, and as quickly as the wound healed, the initial strike remained painful enough. He looked up to see a rare grin spreading over Trowa's face, a thing so dark it almost made the Demon of Maxwell Church shudder.

"You don't seem to be in your best form."

"Shove it, Barton!" Duo growled, leaping forward, and flew just a bit across the distance between them. Interesting. Flying always took a good deal of his concentration, until now. Could it be his anger fueled his power, making such tasks so easy they took only the merest of thoughts? Ah well, such things were not important at times like these. Only hurting Trowa. Hurting Trowa as much as he hurt. More. Worse. He would skewer the boy from ass to head, he would!

Another growl, and the battle began again in earnest.

* * *

Hiiro peered tentatively down at the little girl. She blinked back up at him with large, innocent eyes, and he gulped. How the hell had he gotten himself into this mess, anyway? Wrong corridor, that's how.

"Uncle Hiiro?"

"Hn?" He'd always hated that nickname. Apparently this girl had picked it up from Mariemaia at some point.

"Are you here to take me home?"

"Uh . . ." Damn. He couldn't tell her that he intended to leave her in the safest place he could find. He couldn't tell her he had no clue as to who she was or where her home could be, but he couldn't tell her a lie, either. Those innocent eyes wouldn't allow it. So he clamped his mouth shut, circled his fingers about her wrist a little tighter, and kept walking. She seemed to understand at least that he wasn't going to answer, for she asked no more questions. They toddled along for a few minutes, impatient boy slowing his steps so as not to strain the little girl. Just when he was going to bend down and pick her up, a familiar voice floated down the hallway from behind them.

"Sanyu! Sanyu, where are you?" Instantly the girl's grip on his hand broke.

"Otou-san! Papa!" Down the corridor the little girl flew, arms outstretched into the darkness, and Hiiro shouted, trying to stop her. A masculine "oof" resounded, and the boy relaxed as the form emerged, two smiling faces in a place of sorrow.

"Galer."

"Hiiro!" The joy of finding his daughter plastered his face with a wide grin. "We were worried about you." _Sure doesn't seem like it._ "Well, except for Trowa, of course." _Of course._ Then the smile on the doctor's face wavered just a bit. "They're fighting, Hiiro. Dorothy is dead. Trowa killed her and Duo is bent on revenge." He swallowed hard and stroked Sanyu's curly hair gently. "Someone . . . someone isn't going to survive—"

"Which way?!?"

Galer, stunned by the outburst, pointed silently back the direction he'd come. Hiiro took off in a sprint, Time chasing behind him, reminding him in ungentle waves of nausea that he could already be too late.

* * *

_Remember Quatre, remember his sweet face, remember the blood when he died. _Trowa wiped quickly at the sweat on his brow with his bandaged hand, concentrating hard on Duo's movements, every lunge and parry. Difficult to see the face of a once close friend and know they had to be killed, but he fueled his fury with the face of his lovely Quatre, so beautiful, so dead. Wiping his face again, the tall one thought how much easier this would be if he had the use of both hands and not just one. He ducked, maneuvering away from Duo's pulsing blade easily.

"How's the hand, old friend?" Duo snarled, giving a wide stroke aimed at Trowa's neck. Bangs plastered to his face with sweat, the boy barely managed to move out of the way this time. He felt no anger at that verbal jab; all of his rage channeled through his memories of Quatre.

"I'll survive."

"You sure? We could stop to let you get a new bandage." A derisive chuckle, low and dark, rose from the god's throat, sarcasm glinting crimson in his eyes.

"Even if I needed it, I wouldn't want help from you." He realized with a jolt resembling panic that he panted those words. His mortal body tired from the exertion, and Duo's immortal one kept going. Not once had the braided one wiped sweat from his face. The black grin lighting that pale visage told Trowa that Duo knew just as well as he did that sooner or later, the mortal would lose simply for lack of energy to continue. "Why haven't you blasted me yet, Duo?" He asked, shaking his head briefly to try and rid his face of that clinging hair. "Why not go ahead and get it over with, huh?"

Duo gave no answer save for a low growl and a lunge. Apparently he didn't wish to share that answer. Trowa backed up, nearly falling into the white angel statue he'd barely noticed earlier. He hazarded a glance towards it, trying to avoid knocking it over because to break such a thing would almost be sacrilegious. Looking back towards his opponent, he perceived the distance Duo kept between himself and the statue.

"Afraid your darkness will be purged by her light?" Trowa grinned, "Or afraid you'll corrupt her?"

"More like she was damned expensive."

"A god doesn't need money."

"I wasn't talking about money."

Duo lifted his sword, inviting Trowa forward. The tall one stepped closer, lifting his dented and battered blade, actually surprised that it hadn't snapped yet. He stood still, breathing heavily, trying to pull the air in more slowly. Time wasn't on his side though, he knew, and soon he had to move, rushing forward into the black blade.

He swung just as Duo's eyes and mouth grew wide, and the dark sword fell easily from the boy's hand, clattering to the stone floor. He didn't pause to wonder what had happened, didn't want to. Trowa flung his own blade aside and hungrily grabbed for Duo's own. His fingers curled around the hilt, a jolt of energy rushing up his arm. This sword didn't belong to him, and it tried to reject him. But rage and grief fueled him, and the banged one lifted up the heavy weapon and spun on his enemy. Triumph flared in his chest as he took aim . . .

* * *

Hiiro followed the frenzied sounds of clashing blades. A brief thought flared: _Who the hell fights with swords nowadays anyway?_ A doorway of pale light met his vision and he clenched his fists, giving his legs a last burst of speed. So close, getting so close to the door and the lights and that terrifying sound. Then came a cry, a clatter, and a short laugh.

"NO!"

Trowa plunged a blood-hungry black sword through Duo's vulnerable chest just as Hiiro burst into the light.

"NOOO!" He heard his voice rise, breaking the level of his normal range, split and crack. "DUO!!" _Don't worry, he's immortal, remember? He told you himself, it's not easy to kill a god and it takes hours, longer even. Oh gods . . . Oh God . . . if any of you are up there or around PLEASE DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN!!_

"Hiiro," murmured a voice behind him as a strong hand clenched his arm, "Hiiro, stay back. It had to happen this way." The hand grasped tighter as he tried to struggle his way from it.

"No, no it doesn't. He's immortal. He can't die." Even Hiiro himself realized how desperate his words sounded, how hopeless. "He's fucking Shinigami! He CAN'T DIE!!!"

"How did he become Shinigami, Hiiro?" Wufei- yes, that low, calm voice could only belong to Wufei- asked him quietly. Not a real question, and for a moment the boy thought his friend might have somehow overheard Duo's earlier story. Insane. Then he realized that the conclusion was inevitable and anyone with any common sense would be able to figure it out.

"Let me go, Wufei, just let me go and I won't kill you but if you keep me back I swear that the second I get a chance I'll put a bullet through your head." No answer save a sigh and the release of that grip. Without so much as offering a thanks, Hiiro dashed forward, towards the two figures bathed in the dwindling light of Christ raising Lazarus from the tomb.

The air thickened, pushing against his limbs, forcing him to slow though he tried with all his strength to keep moving. Before him, Hiiro could see the black aura surrounding Duo, could see as if in slow motion one of those pale, trembling hands reaching upwards to clutch Trowa's sword arm. Trowa's face twisted in surprise as Duo's lips moved. Damn it all, he couldn't hear a word of what was being said, couldn't understand anything. Time, that was it. Time was slowing around them all. An ever-so-slight grin crossed his face as he silently congratulated Duo on finally achieving that elusive power. That grin erased itself, however, when he realized it must be a power mastered only at death. _No, no, oh no, please no!_

Everything stopped.

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Hiiro blinked. He stumbled forward, legs skittering beneath him as confused as his mind. His center of balance seemed skewed and he almost feel onto his face. Around him the light carried a sharp sense of change, obvious even through the haze of disorientation that settled over him. He'd had a goal, some specific place he'd been heading . . . where?

Duo.

Lump in his chest squeezing at his heart, Hiiro lifted his head forcefully to find the two forms. Trowa still stood over Duo, the blade still lodged in the braided one's heart. But the light from the Lazarus window shone brighter, and now it illuminated a halo about his beautiful Duo, the demonic darkness gone, angelic light taking its place. Hiiro gave a low groan of anguish as the hand dropped slowly from Trowa's arm, Duo's entire body sliding backwards, extricating itself from that even blacker blade. As he fell, Duo's face turned to Hiiro, so serene silhouetted in that soft light. The young mortal's eyes, such a light indigo, smiled at him with secret laughter even as their brightness faded out.

Hiiro fell. He couldn't even muster the strength or the feeling to scream. His body shuddered, heart deadened against the pain he knew he should be feeling.

Trowa stood, eyes wide, dripping bloodied sword still clutched in his fingers. Without even knowing why, Hiiro turned his gaze fully to the tall one, squinted at him, and moaned.

A dark, black cloud surrounded Trowa, forming a barrier against the shining golden light from the window. The sunshine swirled, sliding over the bubble, trying to force a way in to illuminate the ever paling inhabitant therein. Trowa did nothing, merely stood there, staring down at Duo's body as though he didn't know what to do now with his mission complete.

Without warning the banged one fell to his knees and crawled desperately towards that limp form, the chest bleeding freely over the stone floor. Rough hands, one bandaged but suddenly functioning perfectly, turned Duo's body over, mouth twisted into an ugly, unnamable expression.

"No," Hiiro growled, only slightly ashamed that this seemed to be the only word in his vocabulary. He couldn't allow Trowa to desecrate the body, though he knew not what the taller boy planned. He lifted himself to trembling legs and scuttled forward. "Trowa, stop." He reached out a hand to make the boy stop.

Trowa growled and shoved him away with more force than he probably knew. Hiiro understood then that he could do nothing but watch, worry, and wonder.

Blackness flowed from Trowa into the gaping blade wound in the body's chest. As it flowed, the dark light became a deep grey, and the warmth flowing from it and from Trowa himself filled the entire expanse of the cathedral room. Hiiro's eyes widened and a tentative hope filled his frame. Could Trowa be doing what he thought? He didn't dare ask; such a small question could shatter the boy's concentration.

Through the black haze Hiiro could see the wound closing into fresh, white flesh. The blood flowed backwards, returning to the body it was made for gladly, not liking the hardness of the stone. Color began to return to Duo's face and skin, but that color meant nothing without the soul to inhabit that body. Returning the soul fell to one who had power over the dead. Shinigami.

Trowa.

The body jerked. The back arched, the eyes opened wide, the mouth sucked in a great breath. Spasms ripped through that braided body as it coughed and choked, gleaning air to sustain its new life. Hiiro gave a cry and lunged forward again, scrambling to take the boy in his arms.

"Duo! Oh, thank—"

"Move," the cold voice of Trowa cut into his joy. Hard, crushingly strong hands tore Hiiro away from the still shuddering body, and he could only watch as the taller one cradled Duo in his embrace and trailed a finger down that delicate cheek. Fear claimed Hiiro then, fear and a sudden, stark realization. "Quatre?"

"T-Trowa?" Duo's indigo eyes blinked up at the tall boy, then filled with tears. "Oh Trowa I was so scared! I couldn't fight him off and I thought for sure he was . . . oh . . . oh Allah . . ." Full realization hit those orbs as brown bangs fell over them. "W-What's happened?"

"Shhh, little one," Trowa smiled shakily as he lifted the smaller boy, but not quite as small as once, into his arms, "It's not important. I'll explain later." Holding his koi, his little love carefully, the new Shinigami left the abode of the old, left it as it really was: a rotting, empty old church, with grimy windows and half-broken walls. All around them the world shone proof of the power of illusion. Only the white angel statue remained intact, untouched.

From some crumbling hallway stepped Galer, Sanyu clutching him tightly, innocent eyes wide. Under his other arm the doctor carried the limp form of Mariemaia.

Hiiro shuddered. He choked back a sob. He moaned aloud and doubled himself over, hiding from the world and its cruel ironies. Vaguely he felt a strong arm slide underneath one of his own, heard Wufei talking to him but understood none of the words. Dry numbness filled him, dampened his agony, allowed him to walk forward and to the Jeep. It would not allow him to watch Trowa kiss Duo's lips or caress Duo's cheeks.

"Let's go home," he heard himself say, quietly, without emotion.

Between himself and the others, Hiiro felt a wall go up.

End Chapter Ten.


End file.
